DED is correct in his analysis. I was originally going to say something
along the lines of, "maybe not as hard as you think, depending on where it
happens," but then I started thinking of difficult cases involving what
happened to you on the other end of a jump and people don't necessarily
know where you were going to, if you had a minor misjump that brought you
out in an unusual spot with a heavy vector sending you out of the ecliptic
and you were without power. Depends on how you define it, "Normal case" in
developed area vs. "Hard case" in undeveloped area. You should be able to
pick up the reflected signature of a ship pretty easily (spectrum of hull
material, regular rather than irregular lines), and our recent talk about
Longbow, VLBI, and aperture synthesis indicates that most reasonable
systems have existing "skywatch" programs watching for space junk, hazards
to navigation, asteroids. You'll pick up something of a ship under the
right conditions even parsecs away, but it's signal won't reach you for a
long time, so that's not helpful for rescue, just for tracking down
"whatever happened to Marie Celeste?"
To put some scale on what DED said, if you know where and when to look,
you can see satellites in LEO (200-400 mi/320-640 km) with the naked eye
as fast-moving bright dots. I used to watch Skylab and Echo satellites
when I was younger, I've watched ISS and Shuttle, and you can see Hubble.
Skylab and ISS are usually pretty close on 200 miles, Hubble is out
between 350 and 400 (560-640 km), and that's just sunlight reflecting off
them. In the scale of Brilliant Lances hexes (30,000 km), LEO is spitting
distance. Geosynch/Geostationary orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km), or
just over one BL hex, about 1/10 of the way to the Moon (I don't think
anyone has seen those with the naked eye). So you know if you light up
your active EMS you're finding it. HOWEVER, space is still pretty big. The
diameter of Earth's orbit is about 10,000 BL hexes, diameter of Moon's
orbit around Earth is about 26 BL hexes. Diameter of Mars' orbit is over
15,000 BL hexes, which gives you an idea of how rapidly things grow apart
from each other. One last observation, to return to Neil Tyson, LEO is
actually still within our atmosphere (tenuous outer atmosphere), because
drag from outer atmosphere molecules is what eventually brings them down.
The real issue is getting to such a derelict. I imagine that microjumps
could be what you want to use there, although as Evyn pointed out, your
big SDBs could thrust for days out and days back in. Presumably there are
organizations like the Coast Guard or UK's Royal National Lifeboat
Institution in systems with good starports (C+?) equipped with small craft
or old, demilitarized SDBs (bigger = better able to dock with and brake a
runaway derelict), or even old demilitarized starships (Jump drives cut
down to J1, adequate for near-system microjumps, leaving more room for
fuel) painted bright yellow and red who go out after ships in distress, or
to intercept and identify derelicts. Or in systems that to have large SDB
flotillas they'd be detailed to do that stuff.
> DEREK STANLEY wrote:
>
> >>Having been following the search for the missing jet for the past
> while I can't help but wonder just how daunting looking for a missing
> starship would be. Even if you knew the system it was in if it'd well
> and truly gone dark finding it would be ... Next to impossible.
>
> And if you'd misjumped and precip'd out somewhere in the outer solar
> system. Yuck... Makes you wonder how many ships have simple gone into
> the well and never been heard from again.
>
> Derek Stanley<<
>
> I'm not so sure about the first case.
>
> First off, there's the transponder. You'd have to intentionally turn it
> off (like the missing jet), which I don't believe free traders are going
> to do unless something was up.
>
> Secondly, you're using TL-12 (or better) sensors versus what we've got
> today.
>
> Thirdly, how long before the IR signature of the starship blends in with
> background crap.
>
> Fourthly, space versus ocean. The ocean is a chaotic mix of currents and
> eddies, not to mention it's a difficult medium to penetrate and resolve.
> It's why nuclear submarines are such a popular choice to sneak nukes
> around on a planet.
>
> Space? Nada. There are no currents, unless you want to count the solar
> wind and that only blows in one direction: away from the star. And
> there's gravity, but that's somewhat predictable and far less chaotic
> than ocean currents. If you know the ship's last heading, you're off to
> a good start.
>
> The only thing that obscures your sensors are other "things", unless the
> star's EM output is that bad (but we compensate for that now). We're
> finding planets around other stars, right now. Amateur astronomers are
> finding asteroids in our own solar system. On a really clear night where
> the light pollution isn't so bad, I'll bet you can spot a satellite with
> just your eyes--and that's through an atmosphere.
>
> A big, shiny refined metal spacecraft out in the emptiness of space is
> going to be easier to find with TL-12 gear than that plane.
>
> A misjump is a whole nother matter, however.
>
> \_/
> DED
> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>