[TML] An odd Idea

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 4/2/08 6:59 PM, "Bruce Johnson" <johnson at pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Apr 2, 2008, at 3:26 PM, shadow at shadowgard.com wrote:
> 
>> I refer you to the Tri-Cities in Washington State. They ceased to
>> exist for several years during WWII. They grew a lot while they
>> "didn't exist".
>> 
>> Y'see there was this place called "Hanford" that was being built.

Given that the *current* population is 4 magnitudes less, and no doubt even
more so back then, it's not a very good comparison.

And data mining has gone a lot further than back then as well.

> Yep, and there was another place called Oak Ridge, and another one in
> the desert at Alamagordo. Huge growth, kept secret. The workers knew
> where they were, though.
> 
> In Traveller, if you're not privy to the nav system, or can see (and
> chart) the sky AND know your orientation AND have access to a Nav
> database (see the first part) when you jump, you could be *anywhere*
> within jump range. You could be told it's a two,three jump trip, with
> an unspecified jump number. Jump in a J6 crew transport, and three
> jumps puts you within a HUGE volume of space.
> 
> Jump out of a huge Naval Depot, jump back in.
> 
> Dock in some obscure corner of the system, keep the workers
> underground/inside the asteroid/etc the whole time, and all that money
> and cargo flowing around is completely invisible.

Absolutely wrong.  Sure, you can hide the location from the people you keep
underground.  But all that cargo flow will be noticeable to the *outside*
world.  And your misdirection jumps still have to refuel *somewhere*.  If
you find someplace that's good for *your* refueling, it's good for others as
well.  Ships will get noticed.

Oh, and if anybody ever takes a shortcut and gets noticed not taking 3 jumps
in and 3 out, that will cut down the possible range.  This is likely to
happen when some emergency arises.

> 'Nearly a billion people' in a Naval Depot system of tens or hundreds
> of billions are a drop in the bucket.
> 
> To the rest of the Depot they're "Area 52" or better still "Strategic
> Sanitation and Janitorial Supply Depot 45/6-003"...Just another big
> ol' warehouse filling up a hollowed out asteroid.
> 
> Give the administration and control of the location to a Bwap, and
> include in his orders that it's to be as bureaucratically obscure as
> possible, and it *will* be totally invisible to the rest of the
> Imperium.
> 
> Rig the transponders, the traffic control systems, and the defensive
> systems to ignore certain transponder codes, and the rest of the Depot
> will be none the wiser.

It's not just Tracon, it's every ship/station in the system that receives
and logs transponder signals.  All it takes is a decent commercial fleet and
some wiz at headquarters mining the data to notice odd ships.  Duplicate a
real ship's codes, and somebody will see it *here* when they already know
it's *there*; create false ones, and somebody will wonder who this unknown
is.  Don't use consistent ones, and they'll see lot's of ships that seem to
disappear into the void and others that come from it; use consistent and you
can be tracked.

There's just too much info in the world, if somebody makes an effort to find
it.  And if nobody would make such an effort, why does it need hidden.

For the effort, you'd be better off just red-zoning a system and not worry
about complete invisibility.