Getting Around the Stealth Problem

[james_davis_nicoll]

Stealth in space is nearly impossible. There are various ways to get around that, as seen at http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3z.html. I think we missed a special case of "surpise attacks by former ally": civil war. Any situation where who the proper authorities are at home could cause a scism in the forces deployed at various locations across the solar system. Unlike widely distributed empires of the past, radio means the outposts should hear about the problems back home in a few hours.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Obligatory SF reference: this would be what happened in Long Shot for Rosinante, when the North American Union self-destructed. There were two fleets at the Earth-Moon L4 and L5 positions, one so corrupt and badly run that very few of the ships actually worked and one somewhat better maintained, so that fratricidal strikes were well within their abilities. Unfortunately the fleet that worked was not politically unified as such, so functionality = a quick death for most of the ships. The sucky fleet was so far down on anyone's list of targets that all the working ships were gone before they had a chance to target it.

[krfsm.livejournal.com]

I have that one! Picked it up at a con a few years back. Unfortunately, I don't have the book before, nor the one after it in the series... Will have to remedy that sometime.

The Rosinante Trilogy

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I plan to compaign long and hard for the Rosinante series once Andrew posts his annual question about the best books of a given decade.

Gilliland has a new book in MS form which I hope some farsighted publisher picks up.