Get Your Stealth On (or, How Can My Firewall Team Sneak up on the Enemy Habitat?)

What about radiating the heat away in some specific direction? Gamma-ray lasers? Probably not perfect, one might still see the path of the laser in the atmosphere, but better than storing all the heat.

Anyway let's first find out a way how to do a proper reentry without having to do some major maintenance work afterwards and think about way of cloaking it later

Hmm after I think about it why not just store the heat in some sort of advanced container (neutronium-walled for example) inside the ship?

... And, more to the point, "How do we survive a meteor-velocity impact with the ground?"

The point to understand above all else is that meteors and generic space junk all come in FAST, and they do not maneuver / decelerate. A suitably designed shuttle could conceivably mimic this during reentry, sure. But what happens when it gets to the ground? In a word, Boom.

The shuttle must reduce its speed considerably before the actual landing. Given that there seems to be no major breakthroughs as regards dealing with extremely high G-forces, this rules against some kind of "last-minute" deal. Therefore, the shuttle needs to start decelerating higher up, which would single it out from standard space junk.

Two possibilities I can think of for inserting a covert group to the surface of a planet with atmosphere. Both involve some kind of small one-use landing pod for the groupmembers (probably individual):

(1) Standard shuttle poses as "space junk" but, instead of a full-on reentry, merely skips across the top of the atmosphere and back into space (something that fast-moving meteors are known to do). The landing pods are released as part of the "debris trail" left by the "meteor", and are on their own.
(2) "Throwaway" automated shuttle, built for a one way trip. It poses as a meteor or space junk ALL the way down, right up to impact (like I said, it is "throwaway"). The groupmembers are, again, ejected in landing pods during the descent.

In either case, we can infer that these landing pods are very small (1 person + gear), and use passive systems like aerofoils and/or parachutes to slow their descent through the atmosphere to a (comparitively) soft landing. Radar and other sensors can still detect them, but they need to be fairly close or with a direct line of sight. For those reasons, it is recommended that this form of descent is done only into comparitively remote areas. Do this stuff close to a major port, for example, and they will spot you and figure things out right away.

Using a landing pod on a world without enough atmo for decent braking is much more difficult from a sneakiness standpoint. They need to fire rockets pretty much all the way down for a survivable landing, which would seem obvious to anybody on the look-out for such things. VERY remote landing spots needed, in that case.

... And then, all we need to think about is how to get 'em off when the mission is done.

The extra-slow approach via EVA sounds fairly doable.

Trouble is that space habs and stations need to keep a close watch for any space junk that gets too close and (therefore) could pose a potential threat to them. Even a moderate-sized piece of rock moving at a low relative speed has the potential to do real damage. Add to that, the Solar System in general is digging itself out of the rubble of a very nasty war (from which there is still a lot of fall-out and "lost" hardware) plus the institutionalized paranoia about TITANs.

With all this in mind, I tend to believe that just about all habs and statiions (and probably many moon/planet-based concerns) have some sort of built-in system for tracking and zapping anything that drifts too close uninvited. Seem strange to me if there wasn't.

Thanks. It now occurs to me that Earth has a very thick atmosphere and high gravity, compared to most terraformed worlds in EP. May be some implications there for reentries.

I'm guessing that less atmo makes for a "good news, bad news" situation - your shuttle won't get as hot during reentry but there is much less to slow it down. Pretty certain space junk would still come in at horrible speeds, but unsure what less gravity would do for shuttle-style landings. I am guessing that lander-style descents would be aided by this, with somewhat less burn-time (and fuel) needed on the way down, probably.

As an alternative to the lander pod, there were ideas floated during the 1960s for enabling astronauts to make unassisted emergency reentries. The simplest one I know of was called MOOSE (Manned Orbital Operations Self-Rescue Equipment). Basically, it was a small propulsion unit, a parachute, a baggie and some expanding foam. The idea was that the astronaut would use the baggie and the foam to create an ablative heatshield that he would then recline in, rather like an oversized beanbag. He would then use the propulsion unit to deorbit and steer the reentry (apparently, all that was needed here was to keep the Earth's horizon lined up more or less "just so"). Assuming all else went well during reentry, he would then use the parachute for the final descent.

Oddly enough, this system was never actually tested .

One could infer, given EP's tech base and the lower gravity of some worlds, that this concept could actually be made practical. Maybe.

I'm also guessing that EP tech has developed stuff that can protect people from a basic terminal velocity impact. Maybe something like the quick-deployed full-body airbag I saw on ... it was either 'Smash Lab' or 'Prototype This', recently. OK, there is a HUGE differance between terminal velocity and meteoric velocity, but it might be something to consider.

Pretty much. Having the PCs arrive more or less normally (either via egocasting, or as regular tourists or whatever), and then arranging for their less-than-legal gear to arrive via other means would seem a reasonable ploy.

There is an absolutely horrendous amount of Gs involved (tens of thousands, I'm pretty sure - maybe more). I suppose that a really savvy genefixer might be able to cobble together some semblance of a morph to withstand this kind of treatment. Trouble is, considering all the bracing and reinforcement needed just to survive impact, whether this "frankenmoprh" would be even vaguely usable for anything else beyond that one thing - such as basically walking around or using standard equipment.

Even a synthmoprh would have to be extremely tough and specialized for that sort of thing, IMO.

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A side thought. If the PCs are in Firewall, they are part of a very extensive organization. Seems plausible to me that a Firewall hacker could be ordered to get into a world's defense net in advance - and then arrange for a "window" or "corridor" to be open for the PCs' arrival at a specific time and place. That way, assuming the hacker did his / her / its job, the party could get in undetected.

Or maybe Firewall could have a man ... er, transhuman, placed on the inside of the local law-enforcement / traffic-control organization, who will arrange for sensor alerts for a certain place and time to be ignored.

Something like this could also be done in reverse for a scenario, so to speak. Instead of being the people to sneak in, the PCs are given the job of helping another team do so. They have to hack into the defense net or otherwise find its weaknesses, arrange for equipment to be cached at specific locales, do some preliminary recon (snooping) around the target, act as back-up for the actual operation, and so on.

By my understanding of the rules (far from fallible, admittedly), ego-casting and resleeving not only require very specialized equipment under careful monitoring at both ends, but take roughly an hour to accomplish. Planetary reentries take a lot less time.

Here's a thought. Have some lesser "harmless" NPCs act as "mules" (exact circumstances depend on your tastes, general nastiness and sense of humour). They use ghostrider modules to smuggle in the PCs' egos.

Another valid possibility, certainly.

Thing is, would law enforcers routinely check such things? Or more specifically, on any Egos riding in said module? It seems obvious that they might, but then this kind of raises the question of just how much point there is in having Ego Hunters as well.

Actually, I am unsure what the story is when a PCs' EGO is riding passively in somebody else's Ghostrider module. Do they still register on Mesh tags and so forth? A case could be made that they do so ONLY if they actually do anything whilst in that Module, or something is done directly on their behalf (such as use of Rep). I dunno.

Which, as I said, if this is commonly done, may raise questions about just how viable 'Ego Hunter' is as a steady job.

Errr. I'm having trouble following this one. The most I can say is that it doesn't sound very stealthy.

Thinking on it, this does remind me of references to "monowire" in some SF and (I think) G K O'Neill's 'High Frontier' - using SUPER-strong cable as part of a very energy-efficient means of shifting orbits and planetary ascent / descent. Kind of a "giant yo-yo" effect, if I recall correctly. OK, getting a little clearer now. Does EP's tech include anything like monowire? Possibly, is my guess.

Yeah, might be onto something here. Maybe.

The cable need not be very strong, just long - the longer it is, the slower the rotation, and the smaller the force upon the rope. All the difficulty is in the initial phase, of getting these objects moving at the right speeds.

Cheers for the link on meterors.

Sorry for thread necromancy, but is there a reason no one discussed putting the PCs into smaller synthetic morphs? If for instance each PC was in a small, flying, robotic morph the size of a beach ball or smaller, the ship necessary to carry them shrinks significantly in size, reducing their IR, LIDAR/RADAR and visual footprint.

I imagine launching a dumb projectile - no electronics, no rockets, only the bare minimum for course correction, if anything, outfitted with absorbing materials to blend in with space. It's launched from a larger distance, using a calculated trajectory (so no guidance is needed). With so little equipment, it's little more than a shell, and can be extremely small and light. Loaded on are our PCs, each in a tiny synth body, as small as can operate their stacks, using the simplest directed flight/gliding method available. Perhaps also equip a device which permits each synth to plug directly into another synth sock puppet and drive it. The hacker might have to do some work, but in regards to the hardware, it can't be too difficult. The PCs are put into long-term sleep while in transit, or can spend their time playing chess or whatever.

To anyone watching, IF they see the object, it's just one more piece of space trash that'll burn up in the atmosphere - not even worth shooting down. The rocket hits the outer atmosphere and opens up - for a moment its signature increases, but already the PC drones are away. They fall through a near-vacuum for a bit until they reach the toposphere, and begin getting some lift. Being so small and using something like streamers or small wings means almost no signature. They can either take advantage of the altitude and glide to their target, or emphasize stealth and drop below the horizon ASAP. The rocket burns up, leaving pretty colors.

Once the party lands, they have to find a synth sock puppet somewhere and latch on - the hacker first. The device on the PC's body establishes a physical connection, the hacker overcomes any software limitations, and zombifies the synth, now giving him a full-sized (if not quite appropriate) body for him to help his friends with. Better still, the party has perfect disguises - they're the miners/guards/whatever that already work on the base, and so have access.

Thoughts?