From: seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com   
      
   On 7/23/16 3:33 PM, Mikkel Haaheim wrote:   
   > Le vendredi 22 juillet 2016 20:19:09 UTC+2, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) a écrit   
   :   
   >   
   >> 	Space doesn't have anything to HIDE you. Earth does.   
   >   
   > Air doesn't have anything to hide you (if you are using IR, anyway).   
   >   
   >   
   >> You can't see   
   >> through clouds like Superman's X-Ray vision   
   >   
   > You can with IR.   
      
   	Not so simply, you can't. The amount of humidity alone will strongly   
   affect what range you can see to with what detail and sensitivity.   
   Temperature differential is crucial -- you'll easily detect a human   
   being two kilometers away on a winter snowpack, but it'll be a lot   
   harder to pick out that human being in a jungle where the ambient   
   temperature is in the 90s.   
      
   	And of course Earth provides other living beings, and other operating   
   machines, to confound your attempts to find them, while in space it's   
   likely that your target is the ONLY think in that volume of space that   
   isn't vacuum.   
      
   	   
      
      
   >>   
   >> 	This is actually one of the key points I make in the Arenaverse novels.   
   >> Fighting in Arenaspace is NOTHING like fighting in our home space,   
   >> because the Arenaverse is filled with atmosphere (and other stuff) that   
   >> makes it quite possible for you to pull off "stealth" tricks and end up   
   >> with engagement ranges back in the "humanly comprehensible" distance range.   
   >   
   > Atmosphere does not permit stealth.   
      
      
   	Oh, the hell it doesn't. On the Arenaverse scale, even more so, because   
   instead of the trick we can use today -- put up a satellite and look   
   down through what amounts to only a couple miles of sea-level density   
   air -- you'd have to look through effectively infinite amounts of such   
   air, with accompanying dust, humidity, clouds, etc.   
      
      
      
      
      
   >>   
   >> 	Earth's lower atmosphere, land, and sea? They've got all SORTS of ways   
   >> to screw up your ability to detect, track, locate, and identify.   
   >   
   > But none that can't be overcome.   
      
      
   	For any particular case with unlimited monetary expenditure, perhaps,   
   but you're dismissing stuff that we KNOW is a problem as though it   
   isn't, which really makes me question how much you know about the   
   *practical* limitations and not the theoretical. I work, as I said, with   
   multispectral imaging and sensors, some for the military, and our   
   experience with such imaging is more a matter of seeing more of its   
   limitations than its awesomeness.   
      
      
      
   --   
                         Sea Wasp   
                           /^\   
                           ;;;	   
   Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com  Blog:   
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)