2 ms·

I imagine it'd still be like stealth on Earth, but at much greater distances. I can always see a stealthy spy plane when standing next to it in a hangar. But

I imagine it'd still be like stealth on Earth, but at much greater distances. I can always see a stealthy spy plane when standing next to it in a hangar. But it's purpose is to fly high above the ground. If heat signatures are a sure way to identify space ships, then the value of stealth comes in at the limit of detection range. If an enemy can only detect me at X units away, but I can detect him at X+1 units, I have an advantage. If I'm spouting nonsense, I'd be legitimately delighted to hear why it can't work.

leetcrew 6y ago
this is more or less consistent with everything I've read on the topic, but X can be a surprisingly long distance (billions of km under thrust, or millions of km in "cold running" mode). you would be detectable from pretty much anywhere in the solar system while burning, and still quite a long way away in "stealth mode". even if you had really effective stealth in cold mode, adversaries that observed you while burning could accurately predict your trajectory. X+1 detection range isn't much of an advantage if X already includes most of the places you can actually be and/or X is already an order of magnitude past effective weapons range.