Cloaked Ships

[Timo]

They only speak of using thrusters when the ship is moving very slowly, without the benefit of its impulse or warp engines. In combat maneuvers, one would expect the ship to use another type of maneuvering that doesn't create exhaust or major emissions. Indeed, the original Romulan prototype probably maneuvered without exhaust but simply had a strongly emitting type of maneuvering gadget, since the Romulans were able to remove the maneuvering signature altogether by the time of the Enterprise incident.

Now, how this maneuvering takes place without the benefit of Newtonian exhausts is unknown. But Newton is dead in the Trek universe anyway; I suspect gravity control has something to do with how ships maneuver and propel themselves when operating at anything faster than thruster speeds/accelerations.

As for the particle kinetic energy issue, even if the IR instruments were sensitive enough to pick up the variations in something smaller than galactic scale (which is the best we have achieved so far), surely the cloak should be able to tamper with the particles after they have impacted on the hull. After all, it is able to tamper with the photons after they have impacted on the hull, too. There would have to be some sort of an envelope around the ship, within which things behave as if the ship were present, and outside which they behave as if the ship didn't exist.

Now, the real problem with interstellar gas in Trek terms would be when the ship moves at warp. There has to be some advance warning so that the navigational deflector can kick aside the gas in front of the ship, but OTOH the beam of the deflector mustn't extend outside the cloaking envelope or it will be detected. So the envelope must be extended in front of the ship, possibly by hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Similarly, the warp field probably has to be contained within the envelope, although this may be mere hundreds of meters wide.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Elder Knight]

"Target that explosion and fire!"

 

[MarianLH]

Unicron said:
I've always assumed the impulse trail in TUC was unique to Chang's prototype, and was the price of making the ship able to fire weapons while cloaked. It could attack, but the engine emissions were more detectable than a normal BOP.

I could easily be wrong of course, but it seems like if this was a common weakness then the BOP wouldn't be a huge threat. It would also explain why the idea wasn't attempted again after the conspiracy failed.

I just watched the scene again. Spock said while "under impulse power", the BOP expends plasma "like any other vessel", so it's not unique. However, Enterprise can't track this exhaust with its ordinary sensors. The special extra equipment she's carrying for the gaseous anomalies study is required to pick up the trail.

TNG and other 24th century Trek has shown normal sensors detecting subatomic particles, so perhaps later impulse drives have eliminated the exhaust. But apparently this was not yet an issue in the 2290s. Likewise, 23rd century sensors might not notice the displacement of a few atoms of hydrogen at a distance.


Marian

 

[3D Master]

STARTREK11 said:

3D Master said:

STARTREK11 said:
Yes,you are correct.

Space is very cold as Kahn said and the temperature is about 3 kelvins which means hydrogen gas particles moves very slowly and any ship traveling would change the speed/energy of said hydrogen gas such that e2-e1=1/2 m(v2-v1) after bouncing of it.

The sensors on the vessal would be able to spot this instantly.At present we have devices which can spot single atom energy changes.

I was always surprised why Pickard/Kirk did not extrapolate from last known position and fire wide beam phasers when a ship cloaked.Any course alteration would mean the use of directional thrusters again giving lock-on.

Uh, no, they don't need directional thrusters, the stuff that allows them maneuver doesn't have thrusters. They fly around coasting like a surfer on energy fields.

And I've already said, that the cloaking device also moves particles and even temporarily speeds up light to make it as if it disturbed nothing. Motion sensors could still detect a cloaked ship in Balance of Terror; by The Enterprise Incident, that weakness was removed - and that was the reason Starfleet needed a working device to try and find a weakness to detect it; and possibly build one themselves.

They alwys said they used thrusters in course corrections/adjustments and the cloak would not be able to make colliding particles behave differently after it had bounced off and gained energy and an increase in temperature making it visable to an IR detector.

Particles don't collide with the cloak or the hull underneath it, the cloak pushes them around the ship, and places them back where they should be. That's the essence of a cloak.

Timo said:
There has to be some advance warning so that the navigational deflector can kick aside the gas in front of the ship,

No. The deflector is simply always on and pushes every particles away before they can collide with the ship. It is not an actively reacting system. The cloak is the uber version, where it not simply pushes particels away, but captures them, bends them around the ship, and places them back where they should be as if the ship was never there, and does the same to light and many other forms of (subspace) radiation.

 

[Timo]

The deflector is simply always on and pushes every particles away before they can collide with the ship.

Well, two things to note about this anyway:

1) Things that are on by default are seldom a good idea vis-á-vis stealth.
2) The nav deflector has to behave actively when deflecting anything more massive than interstellar gas, at least per the TNG TM.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[3D Master]

Timo said:

The deflector is simply always on and pushes every particles away before they can collide with the ship.

Well, two things to note about this anyway:

1) Things that are on by default are seldom a good idea vis-á-vis stealth.

Not in this case, as it is an actual active part of the cloaking device. No navigational shields, no field to move things aside and bend them around the ship.