Can't Touch What You Can't See

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

It was amazing the things you could get up to when you literally did not sleep. What did a person do during those hours when most everyone else was off in dreamland? Well if you were a certain Twi'lek the answer was to educate yourself, to plan and to anticipate. She actually hadn't minded designing the Exuvial. And she'd been thinking a lot about starships and space recently. Which brought her to another gap in what she had available for the Ravens at present.

Stealth ships. Oh they had the Red Dress certainly, but that hardly counted and there was only the one, though a part of her mind whispered that there could be more.

She owned Enigma Prime. She could have stygium for days while most people had to fight and scrape and steal to get one decent crystal. Still she doubted it's efficacy. Where was the science behind it? How reliable was it? If she was going to make a stealth ship it was damned well going to be a stealth ship. As long as it's Captain was smart they would be safe and hidden.

At first it seemed like designing a stealth ship when the principals most often used were so little understood was an impossible, daunting task, until she decided to simply slow down and look at the problems. Find the issues that had to be overcome, and then overcome them. One at a time, in a way that made sense. The only way to start was to get to it, as the saying went. Or perhaps it didn't, but it ought to have.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

So, what were the problems she had to overcome? Heat. Heat would be the biggest one. Not even just from the engines. Sitting dead in space with the engines off for a week, assuming any source of life support at all was on, even if it was uncomfortably cold, just to be survivable for your average sentient the temperature of a ship was exponentially hotter than the space around it. So heat would be the biggest enemy.

Sound. Sound was used less to detect ships, but it could be. Vibrations and sound traveled easily in space, unless there was a planetary body in the way or interference to stop or slow it it could travel much farther than people thought. The saying that in space no one could hear you scream was not exactly correct, they could, particularly with good sensors, chances were there just wasn't anyone close enough to help you. Still, sound would need to be addressed.

Radiation. Most engines gave off radiation in one form or another, and a trail could be left that could be followed, or particularly sensitive scanners could pick it up. This would need to be dealt with.

Active Sensors. From gravity sensors to radar, radio, laser, comm. There was a whole slew of sensors. How did you stop them from picking you up without becoming a weird, suspicious space of nothingness?

Visual. People worried about this too much, space was huge. As long as you weren't on one of the major hyperlanes your chances of running into a ship were slim at best, but she would address it all the same.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Heat first then, since if it could not be overcome the whole project might as well be scrapped. Thrusters were the first and most obvious dilemma. Of course her feelings on this were fairly simple, if not particularly kind. It's space. Once you were going stop using your thrusters unless you had to change direction. Otherwise for the most part you were just wasting fuel. She vaguely considered the whats-its the Vong used, but quite frankly she didn't want to get into Vong tech. They weirded her out.

A thrust trace dampener was a pretty standard piece of tech. It didn't work as well as it could however, and it did nothing about the fact that the ship as a whole was still far too hot compared to the surrounding area.

How did you cool something down then? Well a heatsink was pretty basic technology, familiary even from low tech planets were they used things like ice. Ice wasn't nearly cold enough however, and would melt too quickly. She needed something that could get much colder, that she could circulate through a given space, and that she could keep cold throughout the length of a trip at least.

Some more research brought her to the idea of laser cooling, and of doppler cooling in particular. That could work, that could work very nicely. After all, that was a process that could be repeated throughout a trip.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Rubidium was settled on as the element of choice. Rare enough that it was a pain, and she wouldn't be making fleets of these, but not so rare that she needed to battle anyone for any one planet. In it's vaporized form it could be dropped to the kinds of temperature she would need. So.. what?

Have the Doppler Cooling unit lowering the vaporized rubidiums temperatures and then circulate it through it's own layer of the hull and thrust trace dampeners, eliminating the heat signature.

This would make it very hard to keep the ship properly heated though, the energy needed would be quite high unless..

She paced her office, physical movement aimed to assist in mental.

It wasn't really complicated was it? Heating something? It was the same basic principle as much less complicated structures, like a home. How did you save money when heating a home? You made sure it was properly insulated. So if there were layers between the circulated rubidium and the interior of the ship, since you'd want it as close to the void of space and where peoples sensors were going to be hitting it anyway.

The idea of layers, had her perking up slightly. She was on to something here, the other answers were tied in, she just needed a little more work to ensure it all worked together and come together in a way that made sense.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Sound muffling and heat retention could be dealt with in much the same way after all. Insulation. Sound was only vibration, find a way to stop the vibration and you stopped the sound. So if she had a layer of material that could both absorb sound and hold in heat.. Some further searching provided her with Viscoelastic memory foam as a material, and it was relatively cheap as parts for a starship went. Always a bonus.

What was the best way to layer it though? If this was going to be the main way this all worked, it had to be properly thought out. She'd largely settled on unassuming durasteel to be the main construction material. So then, space, durasteel, heat sink, insulation, durasteel? That seemed reasonable. Damned thick hull though. The repuslor lifts would have to work overtime whenever it was in atmo.. Maybe the outer hull could be made of something else? That was an idea to come back to.

In any case, the memory foam would act twofold to stop the sound. It would absorb the soundwaves themselves, and it would help to halt the vibrations in the hull. Which brought her stubborn thoughts back to the outer hull. Perhaps it's material could eb one that vibrated less violently than durasteel? But most of the metals behaved the same. She could cast it in fewer pieces, reduce what could vibrate, but then it would be costly and hard to repair in most cases.

Her predators mind, honed now to follow one path at a time, to hunt an idea through, both through necessity and Shules suggestions could not leave this alone. The hull was important after all.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Something less dense than durasteel but which would hold up to the rigours of space, and a shot or two from your enemies if it came down to it. Something that would vibrate less and/or which could be cast in one piece and still repaired. Something that wasn't stupidly hard to get a hold of or work, and preferably did not cost too many credits.

She froze. Surely not? But why not? Most ships used it, just not to a great extent. Certainly never to make a whole ship of it. But why not? Particularly if you did have the durasteel inner hull as backup? And it might solve one of her other problems, no?

Yes. More research proved that as she'd suspected, the plastoid aspects of Transparisteel acted to block and filter radiation, which meant if her outer hull was made of it rather than just her viewports as was customary, she'd have not only solved many of the problems she'd already tried to address, but one she'd not even touched on yet.

This was particularly good since her other options has been barium sulfate which was doable, but really how many chemicals and elements did you want in one ship, or water. Water might have seemed easy, and certainly there would need to be some on board for drinking, hygiene, correct air humidity etc, but water and rubidium did not react well, so she did not particularly want to have a layer of it when she had a layer of vaporized rubidium. Fired and explosions were even worse in space. Definitely on the avoid list.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

She quite enjoyed being able to solve more than one problem in one fell stroke. Plus a Transparisteel ship would have a wonderfully unique look, though she supposed seeing whatever layer was beneath it might be an unfortunate ugliness. Could it be used to solve any other problems? What was left? Sensors, the most important and likely difficult part, and visual detection.

Well surely having a transparent hull had to be good for something visually? It didn't make you invisible of course, after all there was the solid layers within that you would easily see. Might as well not be transparent at that rate. Unless..

She glanced at the walls of her office, knowing that beyond them lay the city, alive and awake with lights and flashing signs, projected into the air to catch attention, to draw people in. And there was the answer. A grin spread across her face.

Cameras and responsive screens. It would never work without the transparent hull, without that protection they'd be destroyed by the rigours of space travel. Have cameras catching all angles, and then have the ship, just beneath the transparent hull covered in responsive screens, tie to cameras to the opposite side screens, so the ship was always showing an image of what you ought to have seen if it wasn't in the way.

There would actually likely be less distortion than other stealth methods that rendered ships invisible, though there might still be some. Still, realistically speaking ships did not generally get that close to each other in space. You didn't have to. It never hurt to be prepared though, just in case.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Sensors then. The hard part. She didn't want to just utterly block all readings, that was suspicious, but she also didn't want them pinging cleanly off her hull. One of the issues was how varied they could be. Block one and stand out even more to another and completely fail to impact another five.

You almost needed a basic blocker and then one that could be adjusted on the fly. It meant that those who were less handy with technology might not be getting the full benefit of it, but there wasn't much she could do about that really. Of course that was in her perfect world. There likely wasn't a way to do it. Or was there? Why not? Was she falling into the rut everyone else did of believing that because it hadn't been done it couldn't be?

Assume that it could work, she just had to find a way. What could stop most scanners? Hours of searching saw night turn into morning, and the increased noise and the feeling of life around her heralded this. Finally she found an answer but she wasn't certain if she was comfortable with it. Plasma.

Easy to get, half the weapons in the galaxy ran off of it after all. But how could she make it adjustable, how and in what form could she hold it in place? How would it interact with everything else? Would it be safe? Or safe enough in any case, very little in the galaxy was properly safe.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Her lekku ached, and her head pounded. This was too much information and too technical in too short a time, but she was close, the end of the hunt as in sight. She could do this, she was very nearly there. A little further, a little more. She was supposed to have been just a dancer, a courtesan. To move and act in a pleasing fashion, to bring in credits for someone else. Sometimes being a kept woman was damned appealing, though rarely for very long.

Well. That supposed to have been wasn't entirely true was it? Perhaps what she was supposed to have been was whatever she would have been if her parents had kept her. Daughter of Sahmin and Hasna indeed. She was Starbird. A Crimelord. The Crimelord. She had no family and would have no family. This thought brought an odd, aching emptiness and sense of loss disproportionate to a childhood event she'd long since moved past.

Bah. Too bad Lesais fabled side effects were not stronger and not apparently fictional. Feelings got in the way. She did not have time for them. Plasma. Plasma she had time for.

Electromagnets. An electromagnetic field could both hold the plasma in place and be used to, well, tune it. Generate the plasma field when you were out of atmosphere. It'd block most basic scans and you could change it if you detected a new scan. Baffle, throw off interference. The sort of static that they expected to hear when there was nothing to be heard.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Plus, she dug deeper, plus this meant that rather than falling prey to a double blind, if the stealth ship switched it's frequencies to a higher than normal, higher than was stopped by their plasma field, they could still communicate and interact rather than being left in the dark. Of course in the case of comm usage this meant the receiver had to know to be minding these nonstandard frequencies, but that was easy enough to make common practice within the Ravens.

Of course if the plasma field did wind up having to be tuned to block a particularly high frequency, it would excite the plasma which would start to glow and that would rather spoil her whole responsive screen bit. But again, you usually weren't within visual range, and if you were, well then be creative. Put a sun between yourself and whoever might see you. Slip behind some other planetary body.

Oh this was good. She was pleased. All the major issues had been addressed hadn't they? All without any magic or crystals or anything else. Nothing but science, hard work and research.

Gravity! She'd forgotten gravity detectors. Still, gravitic modulators weren't exactly hard to come by. That vexed her a little because she did not understand how they worked, but one had to make some exceptions, and smart as she was there would likely always be some things that she did not understand.

With a pleased grin the plans were sent to the shipyards. Let Salvatrucha start their next project.