Re: Space Geography

On Friday 23 September 2011 14:30:28 Indy wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Samuel Penn <sam@glendale.org.uk>
wrote:
> > [...]
> > 
> >  Coming from a direction very close to the sun might make it hard to
be
> >  detected - which is another reason for a system to have lots of
sensors
> >  spread throughout the system. There may be regions which are less
well
> >  scanned than others though, so though you may not be able to avoid
> >  detection, you might be able to delay it.
> 
> [...]
> Granted, it is an active comms connection, but this
> is meant to be illustrative that our perceived notions of the
impossible
> from 10, 20, 30 years ago have been overcome, or significantly
addressed.
> If this sort of trend continues...

It's possible that this just improves the baseline. Some sensors will
still be better than others, and unless sensor tech improves to the
point where perfect coverage is possible with very cheap sensor
drones (i.e., stealth techniques don't improve at the same rate - which
isn't entirely improbable) some directions will be less well scanned
than others, especially where a small colony world is concerned which
isn't expecting trouble.

> (1) - one way around this is to set up a handful (3-4 minimum) of area
> detectors in polar orbit around the Sun.

How about sticking them in the same orbit as the main world, at
the 3 Lagrange points (L3, L4, L5)? That would give similar coverage
I would have thought.

-- 
Be seeing you,
Sam.