Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Re: adaptive camouflage

Re: adaptive camouflage

There's a lot more to it than that. Not only doesn it have to appear invisible but it also can't be detectable by any technology, like a spectrographic analysis.
That's why the approach NASA is taking is doomed to failure. All diaplys usually work by combining three colors, red, green, and blue. So if for example you want to appear invisible against a yellow background you mix these colors to make yellow. The problem is all someone needs to do is get some glasses with say red filters and instead of appearing yellow you will just stand out like a red torch.
Another problem is that you must appear invisible from all angles because if observers are moving you might not appear camouflaged from all angles. My innovations was to use a 3D screen for this.
One way is to connect all different angles in a 3D screen with optic fiber and wide angle lenses and route the light that way. The problem is light attenuates rapidly in some frequencies in optic fiber so this is impractical in something the size of a plane.
Probably the best current way is to route the light through mirrored hollowed tubes with perfect mirror coatings, which should reduce the light losses.
The major problem with all of this is to retain the radar absorption as no one would want to build an invisible plane that they had to give up the radar stealth for.
One good way is in my application which is where I use tubes in a radial pattern instead of lenses to give a 3D effect, so the surface and tubes could be still made of carbon fiber in the outer layer.
Another innovation I have been working on is a kind of monitor that transmits the exact color frequencies for each pixel. This is done by each pixel having a small prism which is moved so only a small part of the light freqency goes through a tube. That way all the images projected would be the right frequencies though there may still be absorption lines in the light that are not quite right.
I think eventually invisibility will become as common as radar stealthy materials, once the right combination is worked out. Clearly you can't use current LCD's. All someone would need is a $2 set of filtered glasses even 3D glasses would do to see your plane.

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