Question about "Killer" Satellites in orbit...

[Colt47]

You stagger the rings altitude. Get small enough objects, and 11mm is small enough and you just can't see them from the ground using radar. The only way you can predict which orbits you can move in to and move to a new one, etc like you are suggesting is knowing exactly where they are. Radar, especially at longer ranges is not going to work. You'd need to be very close, a few miles and use milimeter wave radar to image the rings.

If you manage to succesfully get in to an orbit low enough to be below all of the rings and be within range to image them with radar, or another imaging method you are going to be taking a lot of time to manuever through the various rings using transfer orbits (you couldn't simply inject up to a really high orbit without having to maneuver through the rings, otherwise you run in to one of them). Even with really power to weight ratios and unlimited fuel this would probably take hours or days to accomplish all the while there are killer satellites making your acquaintance.

I have no idea how closely you could set the rings, but you could probably place them within a few hundred meters of each other or closer. So the whole spherical coverage of the Earth probably wouldn't take up more than a few kilometers to a few dozen kilometers.

Renewing them because of this would pretty much be an impossible task. Setting it up wouldn't but it would be horribly timing consuming.

No orbital mechanics are not my hobby, but physics is, and I certainly understand orbital mechanics fairly well.

The orbital rings would be more in the way of landmines. If you know they are there, they are relatively easy to avoid, but they slow you down a lot. All the while the enemy is shooting at you while the mine field is 'pinning' you in place.
-Matt

Have you checked the escape velocity of an orbiting object from earth gravity? The only way something can remain in orbit is if it doesn't exceed or go under a very specific value, depending on the distance from the center of mass, or in this case our big old rock we call Earth. From what I've looked at, there isn't any way something could move fast enough to damage an MDC ship significantly and still be in orbit without being large enough to see through a telescope.

[azazel1024]

Uh, yeah I have. Orbital velocity in LEO is 6.9-7.8km/sec. A fast tank round travels at 1.5km/sec. Energy increases with the square of the velocity, so that is a heck of a lot of energy moving at around 7km/sec. You'd double that velocity if you impacted in opposing orbits (debris moving at 6.9-7.8km/sec, your ship moving at an opposing 6.9-7.8km/sec).

A BB is going to give a real spaceship a real bad day. Something the size of a .50 caliber bullet is going to punch a whole through the glacis plate of a main battle tank.

Obviously, no conversion between MDC and SDC, IE real world and Rifts, but still.

As for size, it can be quite small, 10-50 grams and do catastrophic damage to something pretty heavily armored.

As for arrangement, yeah I don't even know that it would be possible to release the stuff in such a manner to keep it in a circular orbit and keep resonable spacing. Over time it'll clump and or deorbit. As for initially if you could space things in to nice even rings with no real motion relatively to the other debris in each ring you'd be fine, it'd take a long time for their gravity to cause clumping and a long time to deorbit unless at really low orbital altittude.

The only real world way, if you could setup the rings, that I could see being able to penetrate them would be layered armor like what the ISS uses. You have a thin sheet of armor surrounding the ship that is enough to cause anything impacting it to vaporize and/or fragment because of the extremely high speeds involved and then a thicker layer or armor underneath to absorb the spray and fragments. If you moved through the debris rings fast enough you could pretty much guarantee you wouldn't hit any spot on the ship twice, or close enough to matter.

No idea how thick the two pieces of armor would need to be or the spacing, but the bigger and tougher the impacting object is, the thicker both pieces would need to be. The ISS 'armor' is designed to defeat micrometeroites, not hardened debris of substantial size (11mm is big for something impacting at twice orbital speeds).
-Matt

[Colt47]

Actually, i take that back. Someone could make something move fast enough to damage a ship trying to get into orbit. The objects would have to be fairly close to the planet though in terms of orbit and at the distance it would be at I'm kind of curious if the uppermost atmospheric gases, as thin as they are, would cause problems. At 124 miles up an object can be orbiting at a velocity of approx 17,000 miles per hour. That definitely could give someone a very bad day. That is about 200km, which places it in the Thermosphere.

[Colt47]

No orbital mechanics are not my hobby, but physics is, and I certainly understand orbital mechanics fairly well.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would have to disagree.

If they are low enough to get max speed, they would be detectable through various means and really drop out fast (which in itself would be a detection method with which to map it out). If they are high enough to avoid that 1, they are going slower, and 2, you can come in underneath then time your burn and move out above. Really not that difficult to do.

There are limits to where and how these things could be placed, and there WILL be massive holes to slip though (well, walk casually, more like).

There are also other options besides detecting from the ground or going up personally to have a look.

The speeds are high by our way of thinking, but the numbers really don't add up to very much at all. It would ONLY be an impediment to a modern, real world, space craft. Both because of SDC and because of the need to build it to be as weak as possible in order to save DeltaV, because you are dealing with such limited ISPs and such limited monetary budgets. In the end, even with the sand-blaster effect, it's not going to amount to anything to a Rifts Earth MDC ship.

Finally, you don't spend long in them. It's not like you have to stay there. If you want to have multiple rings to cover multiple inclinations, then you can't have each ring be very thick. So you will only be in any one layer for a fraction of a second if you set it up right, cutting your impacts to negligible amounts (nevermind the negligible energy each one has even if you run against it's flow).

In fact, technically, with enough thrust and enough ISP (and I don't mean Inner Strength Points), you can go straight to the moon. We only use Hohmann transfers because we don't have the DeltaV budget to do anything else yet. But in Rifts.... well, if not possible, at the very least you could make your way up toward GEO and then build the rest of your orbital speed (which will be much lower up there anyway).

Either way, it's not like you have to get up and stay inside a several hundred feet thick band of high speed sand.

Bottom line is - the whole concept would be useless, utterly ineffective, and far too costly to try to set up.

That's primarily the whole point being made. We could go through the physics and say "yes it is possible at X height that an object of Y mass could damage a MDC vehicle at a speed of R while maintaining orbit", but it comes down to how practical the entire process of maintaining the belt is, and it simply isn't worth the effort, especially the kind of coverage the book wants us to believe.
On the other hand, Azzazzel did make me double check my math and find a few mistakes. Basically meaning I was arguing based upon faulty values. Did I ever say how much I hate MDC sometimes as well?

[Colt47]

Actually, i take that back. Someone could make something move fast enough to damage a ship trying to get into orbit. The objects would have to be fairly close to the planet though in terms of orbit and at the distance it would be at I'm kind of curious if the uppermost atmospheric gases, as thin as they are, would cause problems. At 124 miles up an object can be orbiting at a velocity of approx 17,000 miles per hour. That definitely could give someone a very bad day. That is about 200km, which places it in the Thermosphere.

It's not as fast as it sounds. If you are standing still in space (say you went ballistic and are caught at the top of your zoom climb, moments before falling back), and got hit with an orbiting 50 cal. That would be 23,104,000J. Looks like a lot, right?

Thing is, your brain is thinking in 2010 terms. The LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) was so light that they could have put a screw driver through it just by dropping it while working on it on Earth.

Rifts claims that a mutli-warhead Nuke does something like 2D4*100, IIRC. Mutli-warheads are MIRVs. MIRVs typically have 100Kt yeilds. Little Boy was 13-18Kt. Ready for this? 1 T of TNT is 4,189,000,000J.

Here's where it all comes together. Call Little Boy (Hiroshima) 20Kt or 1/5th the yeild. That's (2D4x100)/5, or 2D4x20. A whole 160pts. A Dead Boy could concievably stand in Hiroshima's ground zero and suvive. However, a Samas DEFINITELY could.

20Kt is 4.189^9 * 20,000. That would be 83,780,000,000,000J. How would 23mJ compare to nearly 84teraJ? It would scuff the paint. That's it.

Considering just how tough MD is, and you can't ignore that here, it's vital to the discussion, tiny little 10 gram particles in LEO aren't going to do crap. The mass simply is not there.

And above all, that assumes standing still, you won't be. Heck, even if you doubled it, you still arent' doing more than scuffing the paint.

And you dont' HAVE to run against the flow. Retrograde orbits from Earth are possible. And if you run with the flow, your R-Vel is dropped considerably.

And you don't have to even hit it in the first place, pick a differnet Inc. and LAN.

And if you do hit it, you don't have to sit in it, just pass through at high speed to a safe location.


I'm not ranting at you Colt. Just kinda got going there.

No problem, my math work was just involving orbiting velocity and height, not exactly how the interaction of a ship to the object would take place, or even if said interaction would result in damage. My statement around ruining someones day was mostly inferring something standing in the way of an object moving at that speed. That's still an undescribed object moving at 4.7 miles per second, and unless it's a box of tissues, it's going to damage something or somebody. Probably not MDC by much at all though.

[Shadow Wyrm]

Getting into orbit of Rift's Earth is not just about getting though the Debris Field or Killer Satillites, it's also about fighting off all the attack craft from the space community. After you get though (damaged) the DF and survive the KS attacks (if you do), you now have to contend with an unknown number of space craft that saw you coming, have the "high ground", and will be attacking from multiple directions and know right werwe you going.

[Ed]

Actually, i take that back. Someone could make something move fast enough to damage a ship trying to get into orbit. The objects would have to be fairly close to the planet though in terms of orbit and at the distance it would be at I'm kind of curious if the uppermost atmospheric gases, as thin as they are, would cause problems. At 124 miles up an object can be orbiting at a velocity of approx 17,000 miles per hour. That definitely could give someone a very bad day. That is about 200km, which places it in the Thermosphere.

It's not as fast as it sounds. If you are standing still in space (say you went ballistic and are caught at the top of your zoom climb, moments before falling back), and got hit with an orbiting 50 cal. That would be 23,104,000J. Looks like a lot, right?

Thing is, your brain is thinking in 2010 terms. The LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) was so light that they could have put a screw driver through it just by dropping it while working on it on Earth.

Rifts claims that a mutli-warhead Nuke does something like 2D4*100, IIRC. Mutli-warheads are MIRVs. MIRVs typically have 100Kt yeilds. Little Boy was 13-18Kt. Ready for this? 1 T of TNT is 4,189,000,000J.

Here's where it all comes together. Call Little Boy (Hiroshima) 20Kt or 1/5th the yeild. That's (2D4x100)/5, or 2D4x20. A whole 160pts. A Dead Boy could concievably stand in Hiroshima's ground zero and suvive. However, a Samas DEFINITELY could.

20Kt is 4.189^9 * 20,000. That would be 83,780,000,000,000J. How would 23mJ compare to nearly 84teraJ? It would scuff the paint. That's it.

Considering just how tough MD is, and you can't ignore that here, it's vital to the discussion, tiny little 10 gram particles in LEO aren't going to do crap. The mass simply is not there.

And above all, that assumes standing still, you won't be. Heck, even if you doubled it, you still arent' doing more than scuffing the paint.

And you dont' HAVE to run against the flow. Retrograde orbits from Earth are possible. And if you run with the flow, your R-Vel is dropped considerably.

And you don't have to even hit it in the first place, pick a differnet Inc. and LAN.

And if you do hit it, you don't have to sit in it, just pass through at high speed to a safe location.


I'm not ranting at you Colt. Just kinda got going there.

No problem, my math work was just involving orbiting velocity and height, not exactly how the interaction of a ship to the object would take place, or even if said interaction would result in damage. My statement around ruining someones day was mostly inferring something standing in the way of an object moving at that speed. That's still an undescribed object moving at 4.7 miles per second, and unless it's a box of tissues, it's going to damage something or somebody. Probably not MDC by much at all though.

According to Palladium rules an object will inflict 1 MDC per 10 pounds per mile per hour over 50 mph. Or 1687 MDC per pound at your velocity. More than enough to cripple any launch vehicle.

[azazel1024]

According to Palladium rules....

Where?

Not doubting you, just never saw that anywhere.

If true, it's absurd and shows how screwed up the whole MD system is.

For S&Gs, citing the 10 gram sand particle mentioned earlier, it would be about 40MD. Absurdly high, but still very survivable. You wouldn't get many hits if you did things right and built a particularly tough craft. More than possible for the CS or Triax or Japan (or Kittani).


Edit - I had to do some digging to find it, but this little rule says that the M1A1 DU penetrator (the "Silver Bullet"), does 3,821 MD at point blank range.

It also says that the Glitterboy BoomGun would be more powerful than it is listed as being. Around 241 MD (although still in the ball park, only 60 off).

Well we already know that the system is absurd. You pointed that out earlier.

Before we go further, I agree that actually setting up the debris rings would be for all intents and purposes impossible to make them 'air tight' or nearly so. The effort involved would literally be beyond the orbital community (it would take hundreds of ships, thousands or millions of rocket delivery vehicles, millions of man hours, etc, etc). IF it were to be implemented...

For damage, to a modern battle tank even a small object moving at a combined 15km/sec is going to do catastrophic damage. So lets assume that MDC alloys are super strong, now you still need to make them pretty thin so that you have the thrust and Delta V to make it to orbit. After all, on Rifts earth they are limited to chemical and nuclear drives (Ion drives don't work in an atmosphere). So you can't simply build a flying battle tank that can make it to orbit. They can in the phase world environment because they have drives that can counter act gravity and the space community could, but not something that can launch from a gravity well and reach orbit.

So you have something as strong as a battle tank because it is made of MDC, but it still has to be pretty thin. So an impact at orbital speeds, of objects designed for enough size to do significant damage are going to wreck the ship.

As I mentioned if you were climbing through the debris ring at 1km/sec, a pretty good speed at 200km altitude you'd impact 4200 debris pieces if there was 1 per 1m^2, 420 for 1 per 10m^2 and 42 for 1 per 100m^2 (and 4 for 1 per 1,000m^2) if your ship was 10x30m frontal cross section (pretty large, but not obscene), even if you assume aerodynamically shaped you are still going to have impacts. Something that is capable of putting a several inch hole through the front of the ship and possibly do scattered damage in the compartment it hits is going to make everyone's day bad, a few dozen such hits is possibly going to disable or destroy a ship. The kinetic energy imparted at those speeds with something punching through the hull is probably going to cause enough over pressure in the impacted compartment to cause it to lose integrity with surrounding compartments even with sealed hatches between compartments (you have several hundred grams including hull material that has suddenly been heated to tens of thousands of degrees by the impact, that is a lot of pressure to introduce to the sealed compartment, the smaller the compartment the worst the overpressure).

For ring altitude, 200km would allow the ring to stay up for years before the scant atmosphere up there would cause significant degredation in its density. If you were to seriously employ this and had the resources and time you could do tens of thousands of rings through out the LEO range. You could still manuever through them, but it would take a hell of a lot of time without passing straight through some of them. Most mine fields you could probably walk 10,000 men through it and maybe only 1 in 100 would step on a mine, maybe 1 in 10 for a really thick mine field. If you want to chance it, run right through and take your losses.

For an orbital debris ring it could never be 100% tight no matter the resources at your disposal...but the odds go up that you are going to hit one of them, and even taking in to account the ridiculousness of MDC, if you did hit a ring with a resonable density to it, you are going to take catastrophic damage.
-Matt

PS Why not have the orbital community make all the debris MDC? The books state that a boom gun is Mach 5 (1.6km/sec) and it is horribly impressive that it fires a projectile that fast compared to a normal rail gun. Oh we also know that the boom gun has 200 flechettes that get released doing 3d6x10 damage, not a streach to say that each one does 1MD. I think we could agree that a boom gun round is anything from 1-10kg in weight. If you assume it is 100% flechettes with no casing or drive band, that means each flechette is anything from 5-50 grams in weight.

A simple linear increase in damage for velocity means that a 5-50gram MDC object hitting at orbital velocities (15km/sec for retrograde debris) would do around 9MD, for each one. 42 hits is significant damage for 1 debris object per 100m^2. Lets not forget that in the real world kinetic energy is the square of velocity, so a 1MD@1.6km/sec 5-50 gram projectile boosted to 15km/sec would really do about 80 times more damage. Hitting a debris ring would be catastrophic no matter how heavily built your ship was. How thick, wide or how many and how overlapped the debris rings are are up for debate, but going through one is going to be the end of any conceivable ship.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

According to Palladium rules....

Where?

Not doubting you, just never saw that anywhere.

If true, it's absurd and shows how screwed up the whole MD system is.

For S&Gs, citing the 10 gram sand particle mentioned earlier, it would be about 40MD. Absurdly high, but still very survivable. You wouldn't get many hits if you did things right and built a particularly tough craft. More than possible for the CS or Triax or Japan (or Kittani).


Edit - I had to do some digging to find it, but this little rule says that the M1A1 DU penetrator (the "Silver Bullet"), does 3,821 MD at point blank range.

It also says that the Glitterboy BoomGun would be more powerful than it is listed as being. Around 241 MD (although still in the ball park, only 60 off).

Well of course it is absurd. You said you read my posts in the glitterboy epic thread...even making allowance for some of the mistake that I made and went back and corrected, a resonable assumption of a glitterboy's boom gun projectile says it packs somewhere around the energy of a 105-140mm tank gun...yet the 200mm main gun on the Iron Heart tank does less damage than a boomgun (I think it is listed as 200mm) when it should do 2-3x more.

How is it that an infantry rifle packs nearly as much damage as the main gun of some tanks? 1d4x10MD and 1d6x10MD for some pulse rifles is absurd when there are plenty of main tank guns only dishing out 1d6x10 or 2d4x10 (sometimes 2d6x10) MD from an energy blast. How do you figure that a tank only has the capability in a weapon probably 50-200x as large as an infantry rifle based on mass and the infinitely more capable nuclear power supply, as well as room for massive capacitors and fast discharge homopolar generators can only dish out maybe twice as much damage, sometimes 3 or 4 times on the extreme end of things.
-Matt

*edit* and 40MD is plenty survivable if it is a single hit, but you'd be likely to take dozens or hundreds or even thousands of hits depending on the ring density, even for a fairly small craft.

[Colt47]

This might be a good time to note that we are kind of looking silly for beating up a system with mathematical computations that probably well exceed the math skills of the original creator of the game to begin with. Still, this is just another reason why it is important to use research, common knowledge, and mathematics when making a game system and simplify from a higher up starting point.

[azazel1024]

This might be a good time to note that we are kind of looking silly for beating up a system with mathematical computations that probably well exceed the math skills of the original creator of the game to begin with. Still, this is just another reason why it is important to use research, common knowledge, and mathematics when making a game system and simplify from a higher up starting point.

Yes and no. I like simplicity, even to the extend of not being entirely realistic...but I'd agree that I think that Rifts and the MDC system could have been a lot better with some more realistic scaling of damage.

Heck PB uses a much more realistic system for SDC in its other games. Look at the modern weapons compedium. Is it realistic, no, but at least you have a rifle that kicks out 5D6 damage and an anti tank LAW that kicks out 2d4x100 damage and an M48A3 main gun doing something like 2d6x100. Not 1d6x10 (I am looking at you minimissile launcher).

Frankly a single person in body armor should have a fuzzy chance in pink hell of standing toe to toe with a MBT. Sure in Rifts you are probably going end up the losed if you are that infantryman, but you have a resonable chance if the MBT makes some bad rolls.

In the SDC settings, sure a SLM or two might take out a tank or APC (fairly realistic) giving that infantryman a chance...but if the tank lands any hits that infantryman is probably shmeer on the ground. Only way that is happening is with extreme stealth, deception and planning that an infantryman is going to take out a tank.
-Matt

[Colt47]

I've always found that the best use of the mini-missile launcher was against air targets, because the only good thing about them is their range. Mini-missiles are expensive and are most useful when fired off in large volleys; making them more useful for a high budget military or exceptionally rich mercenaries than anything else.

[azazel1024]

My point isn't really to argue, just to argue. A number of people have brought up that a debris ring couldn't seriously damage a ship (you yourself have argued that)...yet by any measure just a few hits probably would cause serious damage and if a practical debris 'obstacle' course/ring system could be built around the Earth, than likely you'd have hundreds or thousands of impacts shreding a ship.

I am 'arguing' on the theory of "If a practical one could be built, would it work".

Answer yes.

And no, a "practical" one isn't within the capabilities of the Rifts orbital community as described in the books. The one described in the books could create a debris ring on par with throwing a dozen naval mines in the English channel and hoping one hits a ship. It might happen some day, but we could grow old before one hits something. Or at best they could create a single sizeable debris ring right around the 'standard' equitorial launch 'corridor', and that would be about it.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

Frankly I think both SDC and MDC need two values.

Armor Rating and Peneration Rating.

Penetration Rating determines if an attack bypasses the armor and hits those inside. Armor Rating determines if the attack damages the target at all.

Armor Rating is based on how much damage is done. So armor with an AR of 10 would 'absorb' the first 10 points of damage, and anything above that would damage the armor. AR of 14 would absorb 14 points, and so on.

PR is roll based just like AR is now, with some expansion. A roll of the PR or below with bonuses means that the attack strikes the armor completely (person inside is unharmed unless the armor is destroyed). A roll greater than the PR up to 4 points over, means that the armor was struck and absorbed part of the damage (50%, the other 50% goes straight through to the people inside). A roll with bonuses more than 4 points higher than the PR means that the attack by passed the armor completely or was basically unhindered. Any roll that beats the PR, but splits the damage 50/50 by passes AR (the armor doesn't absorb anything without taking damage).

Example of PR and AR.

Chain mail armor has a PR of 10 and an AR of 5. Person attacks with a sword, rolls a 9 to strike and rolls 4 for damage. 9 is below the PR, so the armor takes all of it, but only 4 damage was done and the chain mail absorbed all of it with no damage. Next attack the attacker rolls an 11 and 8 for damage, since it beats the PR of 10 4 damage is done to the person in the armor and the armor itself takes 4 (AR is negated in this case). The next attack the attacker rolls a 15, more than 4 points higher than the PR, they managed to find a seam in the armor, hit above the armor, whatever, all 5 points of damage strikes the character within without touching the armor.

You can apply this to vehicles as well.

Especially with AR, generally, absorbing the first bit of damage you can start to have things with 'relatively' low damage capacity, but that can withstand a huge beating.

Example, a car might have an AR of 15 for the main body, but only 50SDC now. Take a baseball bat to the car and you can pound on it all day doing 2d4 damage and you haven't hurt it at all (damage potential is below the AR). Admitedly it is banged up, but it is really just cosmetic (windows would obviously have a much, much lower AR and SDC). Take a pistol to it, and you are maybe putting some small holes in it, but you aren't really likely to do much if any real damage. Start on it with a shotgun loaded with deer slugs and now we are talking great big holes. Break out the .50 cal and a few rounds are going to put it out of commission (or maybe even just one round).

It still isn't perfect, but with a seperate penetration value and armor rating (where ar absorbs damage of a certain amount) it starts getting a bit more realistic. A kung fu master is never going to be able to damage a tank, no matter their roll to strike, bullets never will either (well, not really), but a main tank gun that can do 2d4x100 damage to a tank with an AR of 200 and 500SDC...well unless the shot is fubbed pretty badly (saying a roll of 200 is maybe a high deflection hit), its going to do some damage, and a really good hit much just destroy the sucker.

Just my long essay/thought stream on the subject.
-Matt

[Rahmota]

Okay so maybe the stations wont show up as disks or cast too much of a shadow they will still be very very bright and easily noticeable by anyone who looks up into the night sky with their naked eyes. They are miles long tubes of shiny metal and solar cells and just basically giant mirrors. Already the ISS is the third brightest thign in the night sky other than Venus and the Moon.

Not to mention Laika orbits between the earth and the moon. Which means that there will be occasionaly transits of the moon. Dont think someone will not notice a black dot travelling across the face of the Moon? especially if its full?

I mean i have personally seen with my own two naked eyes the ISS, Hubble, Envirosat 1 and 2. Multiple iridium Flares as well as the Shuttle (that one did require binoculars though). As much stuff as there is in the canon books in orbit around the earth there is no way anyone could not tell there is somethign going on just from the naked eye. I could see a lot of the more primitive cultures definately believing in the gods walking among the stars.

And like has been pointed out unless the orbitals all use tight beam laser communications there will be radio traffic spillage.

Suffice to say there is utterly no way without handwavium that peopel on the surface do not know about somethign going on upstairs. One reason why I did use handwavium for my planetary shield effect. There is no real in game explanation it just is. Sort of like Star Trek's heisenberg compensators.

[azazel1024]

Okay so maybe the stations wont show up as disks or cast too much of a shadow they will still be very very bright and easily noticeable by anyone who looks up into the night sky with their naked eyes. They are miles long tubes of shiny metal and solar cells and just basically giant mirrors. Already the ISS is the third brightest thign in the night sky other than Venus and the Moon.

Not to mention Laika orbits between the earth and the moon. Which means that there will be occasionaly transits of the moon. Dont think someone will not notice a black dot travelling across the face of the Moon? especially if its full?

I mean i have personally seen with my own two naked eyes the ISS, Hubble, Envirosat 1 and 2. Multiple iridium Flares as well as the Shuttle (that one did require binoculars though). As much stuff as there is in the canon books in orbit around the earth there is no way anyone could not tell there is somethign going on just from the naked eye. I could see a lot of the more primitive cultures definately believing in the gods walking among the stars.

And like has been pointed out unless the orbitals all use tight beam laser communications there will be radio traffic spillage.

Suffice to say there is utterly no way without handwavium that peopel on the surface do not know about somethign going on upstairs. One reason why I did use handwavium for my planetary shield effect. There is no real in game explanation it just is. Sort of like Star Trek's heisenberg compensators.

Oh, there is a certain amount of 'handwavium' to be certain...

However, Laika, is a cylinder ~6 miles long, which orbits a celestial body 380,000 miles away, whose diameter is 2160 miles across, and its surface, when the moon is full, is capable of being 'eclipsed' by the end of your thumb held out at arms length. A full moon would make Laika harder to spot, not easier, as both would be in the face of the sun.

Laika is tiny compared to the moon--it's 1/360th the size of the visible surface of Luna. You can't make out features that small with the naked eye on the moon, much less an object that small orbiting it.

Also, it takes big satellite receivers pointed in the exact right place to hear any chatter from even low orbit, due to the relatively small radio generators on spacecraft. Even the 'big' countries don't do that (the CS, NGR, Japan). The number of people who would even think to try and either contact or look up for what may be out there, are in the extreme minority on Earth as well.

All of the things you mention that you've been able to see are in low earth orbit, mere hundreds of miles up (ISS orbits at ~250 miles, Hubble at 330, Envirosat is 600). The closest of the orbital communities (Yuro) is 62,000 miles up (over a quarter of the way to the moon), and is .8 miles in diameter. Again, compared to the vastness of space, that's tiny. The further away something is, the harder it is to see, no matter how 'big' it is.

The real issue the fans have is a lack of understanding of the scope of the vastness of space. It's freakin' huge. No matter how 'big' these stations are, they're practically invisible to folks on the surface, namely due to how far away they are. Even listening for them is a crap shoot, as visual astronomy is primitive on Rifts Earth, so imagine what radio astronomy must be like?

Handwavium or no, the orbital stations are pretty much invisible to Earth bound people.

Agreed, I pointed all that out earlier. The ISS is one of the brightest things in the night sky, BUT it is still only about 1 arc minute in size, the limit of visibility of a person with really good vision. You can see smaller objects because of their reflected light. That said, the relatively stationary nature of the various space stations compared to the Earth would mean they don't transition much or quickly or at all. They are also significantly smaller in aparent size than the ISS. Much, much smaller for some of them. They are going to be one of the dimmer objects in the night sky, and they aren't going to have the advantage of an LEO satellite where you can see it transition quickly across the night sky, the ones in GEO and at the L points are going to move at the same rate as the other stars, only Laika around the moon will transition, and only a matter of a few arc minutes across the night sky around the moon, and also be extraordinarily dim compared to most of the others. Plenty of people, even if they noticed them with a telescope (most are going to be too small to be able to see them as anything but a star/dot with even binoculars) probably would think they are abandoned/left-over from before the Rifts with everyone up there dead hundreds of years.

Most space chatter you are going to need a radio telescope of a resonable size to pick up, and most would have to be in the right alignment for the sender/receiver in space to happen to line up with the Earth, or possibly even your tiny little patch of the Earth depending on how high gain a transmitter was being used. Most people on Earth would have no clue about the space community. The space community ignores the Earth and the Earth orbitals with the exception of maintaining the blockade of Earth. Yuro station is about as low as they go (GEO) which is still darned high, and most omnidirectional broadcasts are not going to be transmitted with enough power, even from GEO, to be able to be picked up on the Earth's surface without a fairly large sized high gain antenna to pick it up with.
-Matt

[cornholioprime]

For those of you who haven't been in the military and, if you were in the military but don't know about encrypted communications:

Even in the modern-day, real world, Encrypted Communications typically sounds just like "regular" background static, and this is from back when I was servicing nearly-outdated, primitive-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-Services Marine Corps Comm Gear back in the late 80s/early 90s (these transmissions are also typically sent forth in extremely quick, tiny bursts so as to minimize the chances of Triangulation), so just imagine just how advanced it would be in the year 2398/109 P.A. Especially since the several competing Space Agencies up there would be constantly upgrading their communications to protect themselves against each other.

Essentially, there's nothing for any listener to hear -even if said listener had the exact frequency to listen in on (and as part of our real world transmission security protocols, the messages would also jump around on lengthy, pre-programmed lists of frequencies that only the sending and receiving devices would randomly "agree" to at the start of the transmission).

[azazel1024]

I'd also imagine that ELINT has improved over that period of time as well. If the surface community was trying to get at least a glimmer of what is going on in orbit (IE figure out that there are people up there), were using high gain antennas/radio telescopes and computers to do signals processing, they'd figure out that there are people up there talking to each other, even if encrypted, using signal hoping, microburst transmisions, etc, etc. They might not know what they are saying....

At any rate, civilian ships and plenty of others would be broadcasting in the clear, even if they were narrow beam transmisions, so some of them could maybe be picked up on Earth.

All that said, you'd still need the high gain antennas/radio telescopes and be actively seaching through the frequencies and scanning the night's sky and a good bit of time invested to hear anything.
-Matt

[The Beast]

For those of you who haven't been in the military and, if you were in the military but don't know about encrypted communications:

Even in the modern-day, real world, Encrypted Communications typically sounds just like "regular" background static, and this is from back when I was servicing nearly-outdated, primitive-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-Services Marine Corps Comm Gear back in the late 80s/early 90s (these transmissions are also typically sent forth in extremely quick, tiny bursts so as to minimize the chances of Triangulation), so just imagine just how advanced it would be in the year 2398/109 P.A. Especially since the several competing Space Agencies up there would be constantly upgrading their communications to protect themselves against each other.

Essentially, there's nothing for any listener to hear -even if said listener had the exact frequency to listen in on (and as part of our real world transmission security protocols, the messages would also jump around on lengthy, pre-programmed lists of frequencies that only the sending and receiving devices would randomly "agree" to at the start of the transmission).

That's assuming that the orbitals encrypt all of their transmissions.

[cornholioprime]

For those of you who haven't been in the military and, if you were in the military but don't know about encrypted communications:

Even in the modern-day, real world, Encrypted Communications typically sounds just like "regular" background static, and this is from back when I was servicing nearly-outdated, primitive-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-Services Marine Corps Comm Gear back in the late 80s/early 90s (these transmissions are also typically sent forth in extremely quick, tiny bursts so as to minimize the chances of Triangulation), so just imagine just how advanced it would be in the year 2398/109 P.A. Especially since the several competing Space Agencies up there would be constantly upgrading their communications to protect themselves against each other.

Essentially, there's nothing for any listener to hear -even if said listener had the exact frequency to listen in on (and as part of our real world transmission security protocols, the messages would also jump around on lengthy, pre-programmed lists of frequencies that only the sending and receiving devices would randomly "agree" to at the start of the transmission).

That's assuming that the orbitals encrypt all of their transmissions.

It would be a bigger assumption to assume that they would not.

What Bloodspray said.

Their biggest concern at the moment is NOT the ground-pounders below but their fellow space agencies up in the sky with them.

They probably even encrypt regular radio shows up there by now -even assuming that they routinely broadcast anything strong enough that anything on Earth short of a SETI Array could even catch (and due to the physics of sending and receiving transmissions in space due to a lack of Atmosphere to bounce signals off of and the vast amount of space involved, it's probably all done with with very "tight," very focused beams anyway; not much 'leakage' for a would-be eavesdropper to detect in that case).

[The Beast]

For those of you who haven't been in the military and, if you were in the military but don't know about encrypted communications:

Even in the modern-day, real world, Encrypted Communications typically sounds just like "regular" background static, and this is from back when I was servicing nearly-outdated, primitive-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-Services Marine Corps Comm Gear back in the late 80s/early 90s (these transmissions are also typically sent forth in extremely quick, tiny bursts so as to minimize the chances of Triangulation), so just imagine just how advanced it would be in the year 2398/109 P.A. Especially since the several competing Space Agencies up there would be constantly upgrading their communications to protect themselves against each other.

Essentially, there's nothing for any listener to hear -even if said listener had the exact frequency to listen in on (and as part of our real world transmission security protocols, the messages would also jump around on lengthy, pre-programmed lists of frequencies that only the sending and receiving devices would randomly "agree" to at the start of the transmission).

That's assuming that the orbitals encrypt all of their transmissions.

It would be a bigger assumption to assume that they would not.

That would be plausible if everyone was in one orbital community and there were no civilian traffic to worry about, but that's not the case in MiO.

[The Beast]

For those of you who haven't been in the military and, if you were in the military but don't know about encrypted communications:

Even in the modern-day, real world, Encrypted Communications typically sounds just like "regular" background static, and this is from back when I was servicing nearly-outdated, primitive-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-Services Marine Corps Comm Gear back in the late 80s/early 90s (these transmissions are also typically sent forth in extremely quick, tiny bursts so as to minimize the chances of Triangulation), so just imagine just how advanced it would be in the year 2398/109 P.A. Especially since the several competing Space Agencies up there would be constantly upgrading their communications to protect themselves against each other.

Essentially, there's nothing for any listener to hear -even if said listener had the exact frequency to listen in on (and as part of our real world transmission security protocols, the messages would also jump around on lengthy, pre-programmed lists of frequencies that only the sending and receiving devices would randomly "agree" to at the start of the transmission).

That's assuming that the orbitals encrypt all of their transmissions.

It would be a bigger assumption to assume that they would not.

That would be plausible if everyone was in one orbital community and there were no civilian traffic to worry about, but that's not the case in MiO.

Where do you get that idea?

First, see cornholio's post above.

Second, it's far too easy to do, including "public" encrypted channels for inter-organization comms and locked down private internal comms. There is absolutely no reason to have open comms when the tech is that readily available and easy to use.

Let alone when you add in the fact that they actively wish to keep Earth "contained", AND the fact that tight beam (even laser) comms would be the way to go, unless it's aimed at you, you won't ever see anything.

Well, page 57 of MiO clearly states that each of the five space colonies are seperate nations, and the KLS Corporation wants to take over the moon (next page), which means beating Cyberworks.

As for the rest of your post, I'll have to address that when I get done with CQ duty and sleep for a few hours tomorrow.

[azazel1024]

You still have the issue that encrypting regular civilian communications is a bad idea. How are you going to know what key, or even encryption the people on the habitat over yon are using when you hail them? What about between two ships conducting some business or just chatting?

Modern day civilian communications are rarely encrypted. Even if there is a prevelant paraniod thread in orbit, its an extreme to encrypt everything. Some independents and organizations could care less about the Earth (Outcast station for one), so they are going to care less if anyone on Earth hears them.

Beyond that, most in orbit are concerned with keeping the monsters on Earth, ON Earth. Not with hidding their presence in space.
-Matt

[Mack]

Folks, play nice or don't post.

[Samored II]

You still have the issue that encrypting regular civilian communications is a bad idea. How are you going to know what key, or even encryption the people on the habitat over yon are using when you hail them? What about between two ships conducting some business or just chatting?

Make the encryption decision part of the hail. That's how encrypted internet traffic is done today.

Modern day civilian communications are rarely encrypted.

More is than you think. Smartphones, cable tv signals, internet traffic; is all encrypted to some degree.

Even if there is a prevelant paraniod thread in orbit, its an extreme to encrypt everything. Some independents and organizations could care less about the Earth (Outcast station for one), so they are going to care less if anyone on Earth hears them.

Yes, but if everyone else is encrypting message traffic they will too or they won't be able to talk to anyone else.

[azazel1024]

Well my post got deleted apparently because I wasn't overly nice.

To repeat the actual content of it.

Plenty is encrypted, HOWEVER, encryption itself doesn't make it hard to detect. 802.11 is child's play to detect encrypted or not. If you don't know the 802.11 standard however, even if unencrypted, it would just be jibberish, but you know that something is being transmitted, voice, data, video, morse code, whatever.

Same with most other encrypted data streams.

However, what was discussed before is MILSPEC encryption systems which use any or all of the following frequency hoping, spread spectrum transimissions, burst transmissions, etc. These are going to make figuring out that there is even anything being transmitted extremely, extremely difficult to do even if you know something has to be transmitted and you are actively looking for it.

This is the sort of thing that would give civilian systems or 'broadcast to everyone' systems a heart attack. Unless every receiver and transmitter in space is exactly synched with the same code generator/key, the same frequency hopping schedule, the same spectrum spread schedule, etc then you can't receive these transmissions. Normally this synch is done through an initial handshake that is encrypted with a public/private key between two or more systems. However, you can't do this in a omnibroadcast situation and have everyone be able to listen in, which SOME of the civilian systems you'd want to have done.

What is the point of a navigation beacon or a distress call, or a cosmic radiation warning broadcast system if not everyone can receive it?

There would, by necessity, at least a few systems that would broad cast completely in the clear and probably without any encryption, though maybe still some then. There would also be some systems that don't use tight beam transmissions. Also a tight beam transmission is only so tight. A 3m antenna using a 1m band still has a coverage of a couple of degrees for the main signal (There is still scatter, but you'd need something REALLY sensitive to pickup anything outside of the radio node). That is pretty danged tight, but, common, no transmission to say Yuro wouldn't paint some or all of the Earth? From the moon to Earth transmitting to Yuro in GEO orbit, a single degree spread covers the entire Earth! For omnidirection broadcasts, with the stations and maybe a few independents with "Radio L4" or whatever, you could have powerful transmitters pumping out broadcasts in the multi kilowatt range to try to broad cast to everyone in the zone. It takes a lot of power, but it isn't obscene, especially if they are broad casting with the assumption that receivers would still know what part of the sky to point their high gain antenna at to pick up the signal.

Want to listen to Looney radio??? You know you need to point your high gain antenna towards the Sea of Tranquility. You want to listen to radio L5? Point it towards Freedom station. So on and so forth. They'd still be broad casting omnidirectionally, otherwise THEY would have to try to track every single ship they want to try to transmit to and have dozens or hundreds of antennas.

This gets back to an emergency, navigation, etc beacons...high gain antenna transmisions are impractical (receiving them that way is still possible). Also something like fleet coordination can't all be done through tight beam laser or radio. If you need to communicate or coordinate with maybe say 40 ships at once, it is a pretty complex network you have to setup if you are monocasting, duplicasting, triplcasting, etc instead of simply broadcasting...or you have to have an antenna/laser for each and every single ship you are coordinating, or else it is going to be a shared time network in which case it might take a minute or two to transmit to every ship and a 40 ship fleet.

The end result is that, no matter what, IF the signal strength was there, OR people on Earth were using high gain antennas/radio telescopes they'd pick up at least a few signals even if they could never read them or understand them. They'd know some kind of transmissions were occuring and could get some idea of where they were located (IE moving around up there, etc).

I doubt that anyone on Earth is wasting their time with radio astronomy or trying to see if anyone is up there.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

sigh.

Plenty of the civilian communication network is in no way encrypted today. The majority isn't. Most 802.11 ethernet networks are not or only have basic encryption (which is decryptable with brute force attacks, only a few of the encryption standards are brute force proof, especially with short keys). And you are right, a lot of public encryption is transparent. A lot isn't. Your home WLAN...guess what, if it is encrypted it wasn't entirely transparent. You had to select your encryption standard and a password (or the person who setup your computer for you did this). Your computer just automatically enters your password key everytime it logs on then. Or maybe you just used the default on your WAP or wireless router (which I see all the time).

Pretty much anything over the wired network is not encrypted.

Almost not radio communications that are civilian are encrypted.

Cell networks are generally not encrypted.

Sure, some things are, most are not.

And no I am not confusing things, you are not reading what I am writing, or not understanding it. Encryption is easy. However, what was discussed wasn't actually encryption, it is anti-triangulation and interception technologies which most military com systems use.

IE Frequency hoping, spread spectrum transmision and burst transmisions. This is very, very difficult to do in a multiplexed way and IMPOSSIBLE to do for broadcasting unless you want identically synched receivers and transmitters built in to each unit. In which case the only rationale for this would be precisely to hide it from Earthlings because every radio com system in orbit would have exactly the same synched system.

Frankly a lot of the orbital community doesn't give 2 bits about Rifts Earth. Outcast station certainly does, and plenty of independents don't either.
-Matt

PS Considering my extensive career in IT, networks and communications I actually have an idea of what I am talking about here. My degree does happen to say Information Science and Technology on it. Part of that is network and communications systems. It is only my day job though.

[azazel1024]

I said physics is my hobby.

I have quite a few hobbies. IT is my job, currently as a team leader/project manager, but I started as a programmer and later an analyst.

I am not assuming Wi-Fi in space and never said that. You are misunderstanding most of what I am saying then. I simply used it as one example of how an encryption system can work, and also the fact that a lot of it is not encrypted.

And no, you are not understanding encryption. Encryption is something that is deliberately translated in such a way that a unique key is required to translate it. Something that uses a standard (802.11, ethernet, SATA, digital radio, etc) isn't encrypted, as there is no key needed to translate it. You still need the 'formula' to know how to read it.

By your deffinition the written word is encrypted, it is a 'standard' with its own 'formula' for how to understand/translate it. It is not. Now a written cypher, that is using a standard (the written word) and it is encrypted as you need a key to translate it even if you know the standard.

If you bothered to spend anytime reading what I wrote, you will notice I have said at least 4 or 5 times now I DOUBT VERY MUCH ANYONE ON EARTH WOULD PICKUP THE SIGNALS. Even an omnidirectional broadcast is likely to need a high gain antenna to pick it up, be very sensitive and pointed in the right direction. Anything by broadcast is generally going to be omnidirectional, but receivers are going to be picking it up using high gain antennas, and most not anywhere near Earth. How many people on Earth have the space time to setup some large radio antennas and be scanning the skies and running computer algorithms to sort through background noise to detect a signal???

Also any of the civilian 'encrypted' (by your deffinition or the actual deffinition) communications are childs play to detect. They do NOT use signal hoping, spread spectrum transmissions or generally not burst communications. These are all things that are needed to reduce interception or to make a transmision 'blend in' to the background. Most encrypted radiofrequency transmisions are easy to detect and easy to figure out that they are artifical, even if you can't read them. Apply the afore mentioned 3 techniques that are not used in civilian boadcasting and suddenly it becomes very hard to detect or notice a signal.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

Just to help clear up what encryption is for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption
-Matt

[azazel1024]

The end result is that, no matter what, IF the signal strength was there, OR people on Earth were using high gain antennas/radio telescopes they'd pick up at least a few signals even if they could never read them or understand them. They'd know some kind of transmissions were occuring and could get some idea of where they were located (IE moving around up there, etc).

I doubt that anyone on Earth is wasting their time with radio astronomy or trying to see if anyone is up there.-Matt

To repeat part of what I said again. I've said that a bunch now, you appear to be overlooking it. With a sensitive enough high gain radio antenna you WILL pickup the radio transmissions in space, even if they were using a sending high gain antenna, at some point in time a receiver is either going to be in line with the sender and Earth, or polar opposite from Earth (radio transmissions have two nodes, the primary which is the strongest, and secondary which is weaker, but still fairly strong compared to being out of the cone of one of the nodes). If someone was dedicating a lot of time and effort in to detecting radio signals from space, they are eventually going to detect some.

However, why the hell would anyone on Earth be wasting their time and resources on something like that? I mean hell, if they want proof of it, a fairly powerful optical telescope is going to give them enough detail of Yuro station to see larger ship's docking with it, etc. It wouldn't take that long of a search of the heavens to pick it up with some binoculars or a low power telescope and then a high power one is going to give you pretty good details.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

If it's on the internet, it must be true.

You really are determined to fight for nothing, aren't you? For some reason I just can't let people like you go. Never could. lol

If you need a key, formula, or algorithm to translate the stream into useable data, it, technically, IS encypted. ANYthing digital is encrypted (ie, needs a computer to translate it). TCP/IP IS encrypted. Just because you can go buy the bits necessary to read/understand it off the shelf does not change that. No matter how much you want to argue the point, and no matter how many wikipedia entries you find, or edit. It's just a fact. You are too narrow minded because you need to slice that hair even finer in a desperate bid to try to be "right".

You've also proven that very point, because this has nothing at all to do with the thread. Not even anything to do with picking up on space-born communications. Instead, it's about your lack of understanding of a the point that, regardless of whether it's what you wish to call encryption, or what technically is a form of encryption, either one can be done with no end user input necessary in the least, right along with freq. hopping, signal routing and everything else.

So to put it another way -
1, you're wrong about encryption, you are being way too narrowminded (perhaps intentionally, perhaps (probably) not).
2, you're wrong to state that, even the form you wish to narrowly define as "encryption" will be too difficult to implement for the accepted public at large and thereby not used.
3, you're wrong that the ground will absolutely be able to detect the chatter from above.
4, you're arguing because you can not let it go, and have clearly demonstrated so here.
5, people can dis-prove what you say and provide examples till we're blue in the face, and it won't stop you (see #4).

1) No, actually I am not. Look up several different deffinitions if you want.
2) Encryption, isn't to difficult to implement, so long as it is public key encryption
3) No, on this I really am not wrong
4) Because you are wrong and not arguing against the point I am trying to make
5) Yup, because most of what you are arguing is wrong.

Encryption does NOT make something hard to detect. That is my biggest, most important point that you haven't bothered mentioning, seem to avoid, and or don't understand.

With a decent computer algorithm you can determine when a signal is artifical or not (hey seti@home, I am looking at you). The only way to then conceal this, is to spread the signal around, move it from frequency to frequency and keep transmission times extremely short. This will make it order of magnitudes harder to find it and record enough of it to determine that the signal is artificial and also determine its location (hey, maybe we are picking up part of an alien transmission from 1,000 light years away!)

Something like the very large array most deffinitely can pickup even very faint radio signals at extreme distances. Something like a 1 watt transmitter on the lunar surface could deffinitely be picked up by it on Earth.

It very, very, very much is possible to pickup some of the transmissions from space in Rifts Earth. As several have pointed out, things should have gotten much more sophisticated, that includes radio tuners and signals processors as well as computing power and computer algorithms.

I doubt anyone is looking for those signals, nor has a reasonably large antenna to do it with (why would they waste their time and effort to build one large enough?)

Optical detection of a spaced based civilization in Cislunar space is much easier in this case, and would almost literally be child's play (or at least a kid with a small telescope and a few nights to kill looking up in the sky).
-Matt

[azazel1024]

Oh and to futher your "I am being too narrow minded", I believe it is you who is, if you are going to try to argue your deffinition of encrypted. Read just about any news article on data security or even plenty of newspaper articles. The deffinition in common usage for encryption is the one I posted the link too. Things that use "standards" such as HD radio, 802.11, etc, etc, etc are called 'un-encrypted'. Now things can be encrypted and transmitted using those standards, but they can also be transmitted in the clear. Something is encrypted when it takes a key to 'unlock' it, at least that is its common usage for the word encrypted.

So using the cryptographic deffition and the common use deffinition, I am completely correct.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

Go ahead and pick it apart then if you are so right.

Encryption doesn't require any format. What in the heck gave you the idea that I said that anywhere, because I didn't. You are the one that said standards/formats WERE encryption (they are not).

READ MY WORDS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Frequency hoping, spread spectrum transmisions and burst transmissions are NOT encryption. They are emissions control strategies and broadcast techniques, not in anyway encryption. These would not be used by the general public because of the difficulty in implementing them for any kind of broadcast transmision or network to be picked up by more then a small handful of designated recipients. Some transmissions would not use this, period. Even if they were, if you spent a few years, with a bunch of nice high sensitivity radio telescopes and a fair amount of processing power, you'd pickup the artifical emissions. They are hard to detect, not impossible. Given enough time, and not eons, but weeks or months at most, with a pretty good sized high gain antenna and you'll pick them up for any transmission that can be sent over resonable distances in space (at least a few tens of thousands of miles). The only way to carte blanche prevent that is using laser transmissions for EVERYTHING.

Encryption doesn't make something hard to detect, just harder/impossible to read/understand.

The CODF isn't bunk, the ability to implement it by the orbital community presented in MiO IS bunk. A dyson's sphere isn't bunk, the resources of any really conceivable civilization to construct one is certainly bunk though. Just because something is impractical or impossible to implement doesn't mean the theory behind it is bad, nor does it mean if it were to be implemented that it wouldn't work.
-Matt

[The Beast]

I bolded and underlined the idea that my question which you colorized is referring to.

My response was answering that in part. I didn't mention anything about the independants, which in the Rifts portion has their number around 400 satellites and spacecraft not directly affiliated with one of the large stations. Page 32 of MiO places most of these guys in the Zone, so we're not taking the mining sites into account.

Now before I go further into this, I want to know exactly what it is you're talking about. Are you talking about a simple password system, or are you talking about having everyone outfitted with frequency hopping radios?

[Rallan]

Also, it takes big satellite receivers pointed in the exact right place to hear any chatter from even low orbit, due to the relatively small radio generators on spacecraft. Even the 'big' countries don't do that (the CS, NGR, Japan). The number of people who would even think to try and either contact or look up for what may be out there, are in the extreme minority on Earth as well.

Actually they do. The Republic of Japan is a collection of pre-Rifts cities that got stuck in a timewarp when the Rifts arrived, so it has all the pre-Rifts telecommunications infrastructure you'd expect from a bunch of ultra-modern Japanese cities at the end of the 21st century.

Meanwhile the NGR actively tried to get into space with a big expeditionary force a few decades before the main setting. It would be absolutely ridiculous* to assume that they didn't have a whole bunch of gear (both realistic and sci-fi) pointed at the sky to find out what's up there.



* This is Rifts of course, so the canon is indeed absolutely bloody moronic. Despite sending a major expeditionary force up there, we're meant to believe that the NGR has absolutely no idea what's in space or how it lost its space program. Seriously, Siembieda needs to admit that he's writing a saturday morning action cartoon setting instead of pretending that Rifts is even remotely sensible or intelligent.

[Rallan]

For those of you who haven't been in the military and, if you were in the military but don't know about encrypted communications:

Even in the modern-day, real world, Encrypted Communications typically sounds just like "regular" background static, and this is from back when I was servicing nearly-outdated, primitive-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-Services Marine Corps Comm Gear back in the late 80s/early 90s (these transmissions are also typically sent forth in extremely quick, tiny bursts so as to minimize the chances of Triangulation), so just imagine just how advanced it would be in the year 2398/109 P.A. Especially since the several competing Space Agencies up there would be constantly upgrading their communications to protect themselves against each other.

Essentially, there's nothing for any listener to hear -even if said listener had the exact frequency to listen in on (and as part of our real world transmission security protocols, the messages would also jump around on lengthy, pre-programmed lists of frequencies that only the sending and receiving devices would randomly "agree" to at the start of the transmission).

That's assuming that the orbitals encrypt all of their transmissions.

It would be a bigger assumption to assume that they would not.

Five bucks says that the book makes that bigger assumption

[cornholioprime]

*yawn*

Now, how powerful is that cannon again?

"Magically" powerful enough, and plentiful enough, to keep anything on Earth from going up into space by conventional means.

It's an artificial plot device, not a Gaming Destination.

[jedi078]

1) We have MDC in use today, just look at a Tank, APC or IFV. As someone else pointed out the 120mm cannon round fired by an M1A1 can dish out 3000+ MDC. So we also have MDC weapon in use today as well. This should have been taken into account when Rifts was created.

2) The MDC is screwed up, individual GM's need to account for this and use some common sense when running their games.

3) Nuke are nerfed in the amount of damage they do. GM's with common sense will increase the damage to something that will make surviving the impact at ground zero nigh impossible.

4) Weapons damages and MDC levels of tanks and large robots need to be increased so that character sin body armor will fear going up against them.

4) Radio transmission from space cam be heard on Earth and vice versa. Sure it may be encrypted but you'd still know someone is out there.

5) With telescopes and other device the orbital communities are without a reasonable doubt able to be seen from the surface of Earth. This means people on Rifts Earth know there are people living in orbit.

Here is my hypothesis regarding the killer satellites. The NGR and CS both probably hear the radio transmissions between the orbital communities. The orbital communities can probably hear the radio transmissions that occur on Earth. I haven't read MiO in some time but I think as a collective the orbital communities wish to prevent those on Earth from getting off the planet. That said it is obvious they control the killer satellites and have space craft patrolling LEO (Low Earth Orbit) to ensure noting (Human, D-bee etc) leaves the atmosphere.

All in all it isn't impossible to reach low earth orbit from Rifts Earth, just very hard to do, and thus just out of the grasp of the player characters.

[Rallan]

Also, it takes big satellite receivers pointed in the exact right place to hear any chatter from even low orbit, due to the relatively small radio generators on spacecraft. Even the 'big' countries don't do that (the CS, NGR, Japan). The number of people who would even think to try and either contact or look up for what may be out there, are in the extreme minority on Earth as well.

Actually they do. The Republic of Japan is a collection of pre-Rifts cities that got stuck in a timewarp when the Rifts arrived, so it has all the pre-Rifts telecommunications infrastructure you'd expect from a bunch of ultra-modern Japanese cities at the end of the 21st century.

Meanwhile the NGR actively tried to get into space with a big expeditionary force a few decades before the main setting. It would be absolutely ridiculous* to assume that they didn't have a whole bunch of gear (both realistic and sci-fi) pointed at the sky to find out what's up there.


* This is Rifts of course, so the canon is indeed absolutely bloody moronic. Despite sending a major expeditionary force up there, we're meant to believe that the NGR has absolutely no idea what's in space or how it lost its space program. Seriously, Siembieda needs to admit that he's writing a saturday morning action cartoon setting instead of pretending that Rifts is even remotely sensible or intelligent.

The Japanese return, to have all their 'modern' communications fail, as all their former used satellites are gone. They do a quick search of the heavens to find nothing compatible. In emergency times (such as their sudden appearance in the chaos of future Rifts Earth), and it's not like they can commit resources to setting up anything new, they have to worry about the right-now.

Germany in it's attempts to contact anything above, sends out signals that go unanswered, and if they hear something, it could be static or other background noise, because they can't decrypt, or don't even know they have to decrypt.

It seems you're making a lot of assumptions that the characters in the books know as much of the backstory as the readers do.

And you're making even bigger assumptions just to try and argue with me. Japan and Germany both have fancy science fiction technology far in advance of anything that we've got here in 2010. It would be absolutely retarded to assume that they're not capable of figuring out what's in orbit, especially since Japan represents the absolute apex of pre-Rifts technology (which, according to canon, pretty much makes them the most high tech nation on Earth outside of Atlantis), and since Germany launched a major military/research expedition into space.

The only explanations for why they don't know what's in space rely on assuming that they're ran by bungling incompetents who could be outsmarted by Skeletor or Cobra Commander. Which is fine if you want to run with the game's default cartoonishness, but it makes for a bit of a "What the...?" moment if you want to run the setting as being a bit more sensible.

[Zer0 Kay]

I must have missed something. Why would it have to be incrypted if all station - station, station - ship, or station - moon could be done with parallel laser comm? Radio is slower than light and is emitted in all directions. Laser would be the fastest, most secure communications and if they need to they could have repeaters if they are out of line of sight. Inside the colonies... well the outsides would be shielded against magnetic storms so even radio signals wouldn't penitrate the hull unless they had a system designed to repeat the signal inside the hull outside. Communication to PA or fighters should be military and scrambled/encrypted but if there were civilian PA or small craft they shouldn't have any information that the OCommunity should be worried about being overheard on Earth. For example any small civilian craft would have the borders of the CODF and the ranges of KSs for the outer perimiter... if Earthlings used that data they'd be hitting it earlier than expected and likely encountering a "first sphere" of KSs.

[azazel1024]

I must have missed something. Why would it have to be incrypted if all station - station, station - ship, or station - moon could be done with parallel laser comm? Radio is slower than light and is emitted in all directions. Laser would be the fastest, most secure communications and if they need to they could have repeaters if they are out of line of sight. Inside the colonies... well the outsides would be shielded against magnetic storms so even radio signals wouldn't penitrate the hull unless they had a system designed to repeat the signal inside the hull outside. Communication to PA or fighters should be military and scrambled/encrypted but if there were civilian PA or small craft they shouldn't have any information that the OCommunity should be worried about being overheard on Earth. For example any small civilian craft would have the borders of the CODF and the ranges of KSs for the outer perimiter... if Earthlings used that data they'd be hitting it earlier than expected and likely encountering a "first sphere" of KSs.

Radio is at the speed of light, laser and radio are both EM radation, so approximately 300,000km/sec in a vacuum. Radio can be highly directional. Laser also spreads over distance. A 30m dish using a 1cm wavelength isn't going to have significantly larger divergance over the distance from the Earth to the Moon as a laser would (maybe a hundred meter wide beam for the high gain radio antenna VS. a few meters for the laser).

You cannot broadcast laser, IE you can't send out an omnidirectional signal. You'd need to do this if you didn't know precisely where the intended receiver would be...which would happen a lot. Even if it is simply a homing signal so that you can link up a tightbeam communications path, you'd need to do a little omnidirectional marco-polo unless you did know precisely where the receiver/sender is.

Why does it matter what the hull is made of??? Radio antennas aren't located inside of a ship, as you pointed out the ship's hull would act as a faraday cage blocking signals, antennas are on the outside of a ship, so no issues with radio communications.

The points on Traix/NGR and Japanese are well founded. Even if something is encrypted, it sounds like background noise if you were just to listen to it on a speaker...resonably smart computer algorithm could discern the difference between background noise and an artifical signal pretty easily, unless you did frequency hoping, spread spectrum and micro burst transmisions. Even then, given a few days so searching signals and you could probably still isolate enough traffic to identify artifical signals, even if you couldn't read the contents.

Even if you were to ignore the ELINT you could still gather from the orbital community given a bit of time and effort, a simple Mk.I eyeball and an amateur astronomers telescope would have no problem identifying the space stations in Cislunar space and even seeing some of the bigger space ships moving around. Don't know where they are, binocs and an evening of searching the sky and you are going to pick out at least the stations and then use a higher powered telescope to put an eye on them and you'll see all sorts of economic activity going on (space ships docking, satellites being launched, etc). You'd at the very least know there is a thriving orbital community.

I do hope if MiO is ever rewritten for the Rift's setting that they incoporate a bit more a plausible situation. Either a good reason why they keep people on Earth, and that the major communities know at least something is going on up on space, but no one will initiate contact with them and won't return their calls (and blast anything they try to send up), or else rewrite it so that the orbital communities are tentatively in contact with some of the big Earth communities, but it takes so many resources to do any trade between Earth and Orbit that no one really wastes their time. Pretty much info sharing only and a few small delegations that get exchanged (CS would have lots of problems with the orbital communities since most, even in Rifts, have a lot of human mutants).
-Matt
-Matt

[Zer0 Kay]

I must have missed something. Why would it have to be incrypted if all station - station, station - ship, or station - moon could be done with parallel laser comm? Radio is slower than light and is emitted in all directions. Laser would be the fastest, most secure communications and if they need to they could have repeaters if they are out of line of sight. Inside the colonies... well the outsides would be shielded against magnetic storms so even radio signals wouldn't penitrate the hull unless they had a system designed to repeat the signal inside the hull outside. Communication to PA or fighters should be military and scrambled/encrypted but if there were civilian PA or small craft they shouldn't have any information that the OCommunity should be worried about being overheard on Earth. For example any small civilian craft would have the borders of the CODF and the ranges of KSs for the outer perimiter... if Earthlings used that data they'd be hitting it earlier than expected and likely encountering a "first sphere" of KSs.

Radio is at the speed of light, laser and radio are both EM radation, so approximately 300,000km/sec in a vacuum. Radio can be highly directional. Laser also spreads over distance. A 30m dish using a 1cm wavelength isn't going to have significantly larger divergance over the distance from the Earth to the Moon as a laser would (maybe a hundred meter wide beam for the high gain radio antenna VS. a few meters for the laser).

Oops, your right I was thinking electricity which travels near the speed of light. Laser is far more cohesive than a directional radio wave (Radar). Laser is far less likely to be defused by interacting with another light source while radio can be manipulated out side of the transmission source with spacial attenuation (ILS).

You cannot broadcast laser, IE you can't send out an omnidirectional signal. You'd need to do this if you didn't know precisely where the intended receiver would be...which would happen a lot. Even if it is simply a homing signal so that you can link up a tightbeam communications path, you'd need to do a little omnidirectional marco-polo unless you did know precisely where the receiver/sender is.

If it was broadcast it wouldn't be laser since laser is by deffinition directional... I believe broadcast light communication would be called a light. So instead of laser why not just a bright light? Why can't light be used for communications? Hmm, higher chance of reflections maybe. Doesn't matter though so use RF for location and Laser for secure comm.

Why does it matter what the hull is made of??? Radio antennas aren't located inside of a ship, as you pointed out the ship's hull would act as a faraday cage blocking signals, antennas are on the outside of a ship, so no issues with radio communications.

It matters if the hull wasn't tempest/EM shielded because the internal radio communications could be intercepted as well as other ELINT. I know the antennas aren't inside the ship, that is why I said any RF inside would have to be repeated outside.

The points on Traix/NGR and Japanese are well founded. Even if something is encrypted, it sounds like background noise if you were just to listen to it on a speaker...resonably smart computer algorithm could discern the difference between background noise and an artifical signal pretty easily, unless you did frequency hoping, spread spectrum and micro burst transmisions. Even then, given a few days so searching signals and you could probably still isolate enough traffic to identify artifical signals, even if you couldn't read the contents.

Would phase encoding help any?

Maybe along with the space junk and the killer sats they have a nice sphere of radio jammers?

[Zer0 Kay]

Hello again. I looked some things up regarding the stations and thought this link might help http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket ... #nostealth
Even with modern technology the smallest station sticks out like a soar thumb in the blackness of space. Oh and The Japan republic satelites may not be there but the outcast station has not changed position and has not been upgrade so may be contact point for them.
Also I believe there was a major battle a few years back Arkhons just had a mix with the over rifts earth many ships crashing in South America Asia and China. (Pity those guys) This is rifts South America book 2. This got to be noticed by somebody. Right?

That is all about the engines. If a station is at a Lagrange point it wouldn't need to have possitioning thrusters going. Also that is detection of an object in space from another object in space. It is possible for the stations to be using all the space junk to produce blind spots for radar. Hmm I wonder how far away, lets say, 3 mile cube station would have to be for a 300' object to obscure it visually. As far as the heat detection we'd have to find out how it acts when the sensor is inside an atmosphere. I don't think traction drives would produce that much heat.

Damn I looked through the rest of the arguments there and... uh... It's a game So what if all the heat is being redirected internally to heat sinks to be radiated out after combat?

[azazel1024]

They would still be able to be visually detected with a low power telescope. Something in the 20x range would be more than enough to see any of the stations and anything in the 100x range would be more than enough to eyeball larger ships docking with them.

A 300x300 object would need to be 10 times closer to obscure a 3000x3000 target, so something 3 miles x 3 miles 300,000 miles out would need a 300x300ft object at 6,000 miles and in perfect synch with the orbits to obscure the big station at 300,000 miles.

I think when it comes down to it, infrared, visual and radar observation would be easy enough to detect the stations. The big Archon battle probably would have been noticable tossing around high yield explosives, high output energy weapons and mininukes as well as space chatter (though that might be the hardest to detect, the space radio chatter).
-Matt