What would be the ultimate orbital place to "hide" something in the Solar System?

[szputnyik]

So let's imagine that a space agency has managed to build a self-sustaining space colony, like a Stanford Torus, and is looking for a place to "hide" it in the Solar System, in the sense to make it very hard to access, maybe because of interplanetary war, or the space station belongs to a rogue group who wants to escape persecution on Earth.

I think a place like this would be retrograde solar orbit. It requires a large amount of delta-V to access, and it would be almost impossible to hit the station with something that's orbiting prograde around the Sun. The station could utilize a retrograde sling around Jupiter to get into a retrograde orbit around the Sun.

What are your ideas?

[78stonewobble]

If you can put a spacestation there, then you can also hit it with something big enough to make it go poof.

[Winter Man]

Stick it at the L2 of a planet further out than Earth. Never visible from here. The only catch is, anywhere you can hide something in the solar system is where the people after you are going to look. You'd need some kind of plot device allowing you to construct the colony without anyone's knowledge

[Moar Boosters]

What about if you chuck it way out into the Oort cloud. It'd just look like a comet. You could use the gas giants to fling it out there, and as long as it's orbit still comes back near the planets at some point, theoretically you could aerobrake to get it back.

[Superfluous J]

Orbits are very predictable. It would be very easy to hit the station with something if it was going retrograde, and by putting it retrograde you gave your opponents free kinetic energy so they don't even need to hit it with anything very big!

The best place to hide something would be underground, either in an asteroid or under the surface of the Moon or something.

[KerikBalm]

On titan perhaps?

Beyond that. There is no stealth in space, if its warm enough for people to live on it, it will shine like a torch in the IR spectrum across the cool background of space (CBR being about what.... 3-4K?).

So, you need to camoflauge it, make it look like just another part of a celestial body.

Underground, or some place with a thick atmosphere.

Any of the gas giants are too thick - though I wonder how low your orbit could get before it will degrade rapidly, if you were in a very tight orbit around... lets say Uranus, you might not be noticed.

How you would get it anywhere without being noticed.... I don't know.

And you can't travel back and forth without being noticed... so....

[SargeRho]

I'd say beneath the clouds of Jupiter.

[Scotius]

As KerikBalm wrote, there is no stealth in space. So your only chance at hiding something there, is to put it somewhere really dumb. A place where no sane man would place anything valuable. Very, very inclined solar orbit perhaps? Very high above ecliptic plane, where nothing interesting is to be found anyway - and fuel price for such enormous plane change would be mind-boggling.

[kellven]

The Hummer dealer.

Either that, or where you left your keys.

Sorry, I had to.

[Ravenchant]

It's obvious: put it in orbit around Pluto and freeze it so it looks like a moonlet...no, wait. That one failed.

[vger]

Comet? They're constantly releasing energy which could make for a convenient 'mask.'

[Streetwind]

It really depends on you getting the station there unnoticed or not.

If you cannot put it there unnoticed, you can't really hide it. You can only make it hard to access, but the very nature of this endeavor means you can never make it hard enough to access (because putting the station itself there will always be harder than accessing the station there).

If you can somehow sneak it offworld without anyone being the wiser - put it co-orbital with Earth, directly opposite the Sun. That means the Sun will always be directly interposed between your hiding place and the Earth and all its detectors, telescopes and so on. I guarantee you, there is no better object in the entire solar system for shielding something from prying eyes than a giant, unshielded nuclear fusion reactor.

[peadar1987]

There's no really good place to hide from everything, but if you're just trying to hide from earth, bring a load of RCS fuel and put yourself in a Lissajous Orbit at the Earth-Moon or Sun-Earth L3 point.

Either that, or put it very far out, and out-of-plane. that way, most of the time you won't be in the regions people are looking at on a regular basis.

[DoctorCruz]

Orbits are very predictable. It would be very easy to hit the station with something if it was going retrograde, and by putting it retrograde you gave your opponents free kinetic energy so they don't even need to hit it with anything very big!

The best place to hide something would be underground, either in an asteroid or under the surface of the Moon or something.

I have to agree, You find a moon that is tidally locked to a huge planet, like Saturn or Jupiter and then you build in Earth's blind spot.

[Brotoro]

Put it in some near-Earth solar orbit, and then inflate an irregular painted plastic shell around it that makes it look like a tiny asteroid.

When you can't be out of sight, camouflage is your friend.

[frozenbacon]

Underground on another planet. Planets are friggin huge, no way anyone is gonna accidentally stumble on your base, unless you are spitting out radio signals constantly. Even with all the probes around and on mars right now, I think a person can easily set up a base unseen.

I wouldn't keep my station up in space because there is way too much nothing out there. Things are easy to pick out in front of a background of nothingness. Hell, we are able to find asteroids that are as big as buildings from millions of miles away. A warm space station should be easy to pick out if you have a vauge idea of where to look. If I had to stay in space, the most obvious location will be the earth, sun L3 point. However, once someone sends a probe out to investegate the area the station is pretty much screwed. As soon as you fire up those engines and start moving again, and probe knowing what to look for should find you extremely easily.

[jwenting]

rather than trying to hide it, better plan of having decoys and defenses (need those anyway against rogue asteroids and space debris).

Somewhere in the asteroid belt could work, use those rocks as impromptu shielding against incoming stuff as well as to place decoys on.

[YourEverydayWaffle]

Remember that spectrometers can be used to detect certain elements that people might be looking for, like titanium used in the walls of an underground base. That just destroys all aspects of camouflage's functionality if you're got a spec satellite scanning in an area near your hidden base.

Edited April 24, 2014 by YourEverydayWaffle
spelling, extended

[Javster]

If you can get it there, anyone else can, unless you destroy the planet you slingshot around...

[Duxwing]

Hanging from a balloon in Jupiter, which is so big and thick that finding you would be impractical.

-Duxwing

[Rakaydos]

Hanging from a balloon in Jupiter, which is so big and thick that finding you would be impractical.

-Duxwing

Saturn might be a better choice from a livability perspective, as it has closer to an earth gravity

[peadar1987]

Saturn might be a better choice from a livability perspective, as it has closer to an earth gravity

And more of an earth radiation

[Yasmy]

What does ultimate mean? What are your parameters? What are your goals?

If you just don't want to be found, then hands down, way out in the Oort cloud. At a lightyear away, you won't ever be found if you don't want to be found.

[Legendary Emu]

An floating base in Venus's upper atmosphere? An underground one in an obscure Jovian moon?

[DerpenWolf]

Up Uranus.

(Sorry but I just couldn't help but make that childish joke!)

But now that I think about it doesn't Uranus have a equatorial surface gravity of 8.86g (I am assuming that is measured from the alleged liquid surface. Please correct me if I am wrong as I am pretty sure I am) So maybe you could have a floating dome/ habitat base thing moving about. Uranus might not be a bad place to hide actually as it has no extremely large moons or places of vast interest so very few groups would likely pass by. And with it's messed up magnetic field, crazy axial tilt(each pole gets about 42 years of darkness at a time), and odd weather habits it could potentially be a very good palace to hide. If you can't land/ float about the planet one of the torn up moons might be a good place to hide!