KSP stealth

[Decent Weasel]

A few months ago - in 0.18 I think - I was inspired by MISTY and the like to try my hand at 'stealth satellites.' Sure, there was nobody to hide from, but hey, it would be a fun project to see if I could make a ship that was (at least in theory) hard to detect and shoot down.

In reality, of course, space stealth is very tricky, and when covering any more than a limited aspect it would bring with it all manner of thermal problems, some of which would betray the ship's presence, and some of which would just quickly broil its contents.

Fortunately that's not a problem here.

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My idea was that a ship could be hidden at long range by tagging it as debris and hiding it in a cloud of jettisoned parts, and hidden at short range via black paneling that would camouflage the ship against the blackness of space. Special bay doors or tunnels could hide access hatches and dispensers or launchers, while a long skirt around the engine could make the exhaust plume hard to spot.

My ship designs have gotten more efficient since this one - the first one I was able to make work - but I haven't made any significant strides. (I was originally interested in electrochromic paneling to make the ship glow when it was against the milky way, but a polar orbit might make this less likely to be an issue.)

Any ideas or exchange would be appreciated!

Edited December 7, 2013 by Decent Weasel
Implementing Ojimak's tutelage.

[Ojimak]

To imbed an album, type the five letter code at the end of the url between {imgur}{/imgur} brackets (except with [] instead of {}), so in your case, it would be {imgur}GNkoA{/imgur} (with [] instead), resulting in:

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-Ojimak

Nice satellite, btw.

[Decent Weasel]

Hey, thanks!