Great perspective. I just love the point of view with the asteroid field!

Fantastic scifi scene!!

excellent scene and interesting narrative

Very nice image and story!

Awesome scene and cool story!

Very good image. And I love the "boys'" name for the mission.

Excellent image and story

DIFICIL TRANSTIO, GENIAL, CREACION.

In your text you state: “That system had a couple big gas giants and an asteroid field …The gas giants hid our electromagnetic sig, and their magnetic fields covered half the frickin' star system …” I am assuming that by “sig” you mean spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object is the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object. The electromagnetic spectrum extends from below frequencies used for modern radio to gamma radiation at the short-wavelength end, covering wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to a fraction of the size of an atom. The long wavelength limit is the size of the universe itself, while it is thought that the short wavelength limit is in the vicinity of the Planck length, although in principle the spectrum is infinite and continuous. I’m fairly certain that nothing short of being in close proximity to a hyper-nova would have the effect you describe, and then only until the blast-wave passes – but then your heroic crews have more pressing problems on their hands -- as their ships glow blue-white and vaporize …So, if these are merely gas giants (not even Brown Dwarf class, judging by your description) how is it they emit such electromagnetic fury? You say in your text: “All that was left was to hide our mass …” As it turns out hiding your mass is not really the problem – the problem is heat – heat from your life-system, heat from your power-plant, and heat from your drive plume. If your spacecraft are torchships – as one might presume from your statement that they can cross a star system in mere days -- their thrust power is several terawatts. This means the exhaust plum is so intense that it could be detected from Alpha Centauri. By a passive sensor. The Space Shuttle's much weaker main engines can be detected past the orbit of Pluto. The Space Shuttle's maneuvering thrusters can be seen as far as the asteroid belt. And even a puny ship using ion drive to thrust at a measly 1/1000 of a g could be spotted at one astronomical unit. The life support for your crew emits enough heat to be detected at an exceedingly long range. The 285 Kelvin habitat module will stand out like a search-light against the three Kelvin background of outer space. And if you are hoping to lose your tiny heat signature in the vastness of the sky, I've got some bad news for you. Current astronomical instruments can do a complete sky survey in about four hours, or less. This is with current off-the-shelf technology. Presumably future technology would be better. You say in your text: “we came in on the opposite side of the system over this huge asteroid belt and just skimmed it until we could pounce …” This presumes a mass density of asteroids that would occlude the visible sky – not likely to be in an inhabited system – not even likely in a primordial system, actually, such a swarm of objects in close proximity would quickly batter each other into powder. That being neither here nor there, the technical issue is how long does it take to detect space craft in a given volume of space? As it turns out there is a technical answer. A full spherical sky search is 41,000 square degrees. A wide angle lens will cover about 100 square degrees (a typical SLR personal camera is about 1 square degree); you'll want overlap, so call it 480 exposures for a full sky search, with each exposure taking about 350 megapixels. Estimated exposure time is about 30 seconds per 100 square degrees of sky looking for a magnitude 12 object. So, 480 / 2 is 240 minutes, or about 4 HOURS for a complete sky survey. This will require signal processing of about 150 gigapixels per two hours, and take a terabyte of storage per sweep. The probability of detection rises very quickly to 100 percent six hours after entering the system. According to certain defense experts the maximum range a ship with its engines blazing away can be detected with current technology is: Rd = ( 17.8E6 sqrt( MsAsIsp(1-Nd)(1-Ns) ) ) (sqrt(0.04 3.141593...)) where: Rd = maximum detection range (kilometers) Ms = bogey spacecraft mass (tons) As = bogey spacecraft acceleration (G) Isp = bogey drive specific impulse (seconds) Nd = bogey drive efficiency (0.0 to 1.0) Ns = bogey "stealth efficiency", i.e. fraction of waste energy which can be magically shielded (with frantic waving of hands, one presumes) from enemy detectors. (0.0 to 1.0). This assumes about one hour for a full sky scan. Current chemical rockets have Nd of roughly 0.95. Ion drives get about 0.50, and steady-state plasma thrusters 0.65 or so - both can in principle be pushed to 0.90 with some difficulty, but not much beyond that. For realistic rockets, Ns = 0.0. If you claim your ships don’t radiate any heat at all then you are violating the laws of thermodynamics – any hand-wavum field that can contain all the heat radiated by a space craft’s life-system (not to mention that nova hot drive plume) that can be contained in a physical plant smaller than say, Manhattan Island, has other properties as well – as an invulnerable shield against fusion bombs and kinetic energy weapons, for example. There really isn't any way to hide your waste energy from your opponents, short of complete fantasy. The maximum range a ship running silent with engines shut down can be detected with current technology is: Rd = 13.4 sqrt(A) T^2 where: Rd = detection range (km) A = spacecraft projected area (m^2 ) T = surface temperature (Kelvin, room temperature is about 285-290 K) If the ship is a convex shape, its projected area will be roughly one quarter of its surface area. Example: A Russian Oscar submarine is a cylinder 154 meters long and has a beam of 18 meters, which would be a good ballpark estimate of the size of an interplanetary warship. If it was nose on to you the surface area would be 250 square meters. If it was broadside the surface area would be approximately 2770. So on average the projected area would be 1510 square meters ([250 + 2770] / 2). If the Oscar's crew was shivering at the freezing point, the maximum detection range of the frigid submarine would be 13.4 sqrt(1510) * 2732 = 38,800,000 kilometers, about one hundred times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, or about 129 light-seconds. If the crew had a more comfortable room temperature, the Oscar could be seen from even farther away. To keep the lifesystem in the spacecraft at levels where the crew can live, you probably want it above 273 K (where water freezes), and preferably at 285-290 K (room temperature). Glancing at the above equation it is evident that the lower the spacecraft's temperature, the harder it is to detect. "Aha!" you say, "why not refrigerate the ship and radiate the heat from the side facing away from the enemy?" I’ll explain why not. To actively refrigerate, you need power. So you have to fire up the nuclear reactor. Suddenly you have a hot spot on your ship that is about 800 K, minimum, so you now have even more waste heat to dump. This means a larger radiator surface to dump all the heat, which means more mass. Much more mass. It will be either a whopping two to three times the mass of your reactor or it will be so flimsy it will snap the moment you engage the thrusters. It is a bigger target, and now you have to start worrying about a hostile ship noticing that you occluded a star. There’s more bad news for would be stealthers trying to radiate the heat from the side facing away from the enemy. Redirecting the emissions merely relocates the problem. The energy's got to go somewhere, and for a fairly modest investment in picket ships or sensor drones, the enemy can pretty much block you from safely radiating to any significant portion of the sky. In your text you say: “The Impies were real good at recon. They had those little scout boats, we called 'em Stalkers, and they were all over the outer system …” So already you have admitted that the enemy has observation platforms positioned all over the system …Now, space is not an ocean, it is not a two dimensional plane and this means that these ships need not all be positioned on the same plane -- so the likelihood of any field of asteroids acting to visually occlude your fleet is really vanishingly small – again, this is to say nothing in regards to the problem of all that waste heat radiating from your star-hot drives. If you try to focus the emissions into some very narrow cone you know to be safe, you run into the problem that the radiator area for a given power is inversely proportional to the fraction of the sky illuminated. With proportionate increase in both the heat leakage through the back surfaces, and the signature to active or semi-active (reflected sunlight) sensors. Plus, there's the problem of how you know what a safe direction to radiate is in the first place. You seem to be simultaneously arguing for stealthy spaceships and complete knowledge of the position of enemy sensor platforms. If stealth works, you can't expect to know where the enemy has all of his sensors, so you can't know what is a safe direction to radiate. Which means you can't expect to achieve practical stealth using that mechanism in the first place. Sixty degrees has been suggested here as a reasonably "narrow" cone to hide one's emissions in. As a sixty-degree cone is roughly one-tenth of a full sphere, a couple dozen pickets or drones are enough to cover the full sky so that there is no safe direction to radiate even if you know where they all are. The possibility of hidden sensor platforms, and especially hidden, moving sensor platforms, is just icing on the cake. Note, in particular, that a moving sensor platform doesn't have to be within your emission cone at any specific time to detect you, it just has to pass through that cone at some time during the course of the pre-battle maneuvering. Which rather substantially increases the probability of detection even for very narrow emission cones. When the enemy spots your ship by the exhaust plume, it not only knows that a ship is there, it also knows the ship's exhaust velocity, engine mass flow, engine power, thrust, acceleration, ship's mass and ship's course. Not only can it tell a warship from a cargo freighter with all that information, but it can also tell the class of warship, and maybe make a good stab at determining which particular member of that class it is. Your propulsion system's exhaust velocity is revealed by the doppler shift in the emission lines, mass flow is revealed by the plume's luminosity, the thrust is exhaust velocity times mass flow, acceleration is revealed by watching how fast the plume origin changes position, ship's mass is thrust divided by acceleration, and ship's course is revealed by plotting the vector of the plume origin. The problem with directional radiation is that you have to know both where the enemy sensor platforms are, and you have to have a way of slowing down to match orbits that isn't the equivalent of swinging end for end and lighting up the torch. Furthermore, directing your waste heat (and making some part of your ship colder, a related phenomena) requires more power for the heat pump - and every W of power generated generates 4 W of waste heat. Imagine your radiators as being sheets of paper sticking edge out from the hull of your ship. You radiate from the flat sides. If you know exactly where the enemy sensors are, you can try and put your radiators edge on to them, and will "hide". You want your radiators to be 180 degrees apart so they're not radiating into each other. Most configurations that radiate only to a part of the sky will be vastly inefficient because they radiate into each other. Which means they get larger and more massive, which reduces engine performance...and they still require that you know where the sensor is. The next logical step is to make a sunshade that blocks your radiation from the sensor. This also requires knowing where the sensor is, and generates problems if the sensor blocker is attached to your ship, since it will slowly heat up to match the equilibrium temperature of your outer hull....and may block your sensors in that direction as well. If you are actually trying to apply thrust, the upper equation comes into play, and they can see you all over the solar system. What's worse, they can measure the spectrum of your drive to estimate the thrust and use a telescope to observe your acceleration. Simple division will reveal the mass of your ship. "Well fine!", you say, "I'll just burn once and drift silently" But now you will be months in getting to your target. The extra time increases the chance that the enemy will spot you. It will be harder to keep your directional radiator aimed away from any enemy observers. And if you are spotted, so much of your ship mass will be radiators instead of weapons, so that the enemy ships will out-gun you by an obscene margin. Not to mention the fact that once your initial burn is spotted, the enemy will be able to calculate your future position anytime in the future. They can set a computer controlled telescope to track your current calculated position, and will quickly spot any future course correction burns. In regards to shutting down and stealthily coasting into enemy range from a billion kilometers away … That's nice if you can plan your tactical operations six months in advance. Not very likely, at least against a maneuvering foe. Sometime between when you boost and when you arrive, he'll redeploy and you'll have to correct your course accordingly. Which will give you away. And you can't beat that effect by coasting in really, really fast so as to cross a billion kilometers in a week. Boosting to such a speed in the first place will require so much energy that you'll be detected even from a billion kilometers away. You can back off to twenty billion kilometers, of course, but then you're dealing with that six-month planning cycle again... Distance cancels out of the math on that one. The detection range scales as the square root of the target spacecraft's drive power, and the drive power required to cross a distance in a given time scales as the square of that distance. No matter how far away you start, you find that there is an irreducible minimum of time that must be spent on boost-and-coast to avoid detection. Which is generally measured in months. Fine for strategic planning, but not for tactical operations. Only if you can predict the strategic positions well enough to plan the tactical deployment of your forces during the attack months in advance. Otherwise your space fleet will have to choose between correcting its own course and blowing its cover, opening fire from the wrong position, or aborting the attack entirely. Accelerating to a proper vector while beyond detection range runs into the fundamental problem of how you figure out what the proper vector is. Even granted that you know the present location of the enemy fleet, you're going to be coasting for a very long time, and you've no way of knowing where they will be months in advance. So you'll probably have to adjust your course somewhere along the line, which means lighting up your engines, which means giving yourself away. So as it turns out your statement: “Almost got spotted a few times, too …” contains a practical impossibility. There just is not any possibility of stealth in space. So much for being ambushed by space craft appearing out of nowhere. And everybody on the enemy cruiser (or base, or whatever) would know that the hostile fleet of bogies would be within combat range in three days, five hours, and thirty-three minutes. You might as well take it easy and get your rest before the battle. You know the cliché: long stretches of boredom punctuated by brief moments of stark terror …

Wow! wblack's really given you a response!!! Don't get one like that every day! Of course, it tends to dampen the creative writing spirit a bit; but hopefully, it also challenges it to new and better heights. I liked the writing and thought you did well in illustrating it--or visa versa.

...I kinda feel bad that he wasted all that on a sci-fi caption for an art piece. It's to entertain, not to create a thesis.

nice render!

@ wblack...they call it science fiction for a reason....LOL....relax.. ...cool render mark.. ...

Cool!!!

cool looking capital ships