Starship combat

[DFW]

The real sensor range would probably be a lot smaller because of the many other celestial objects with gravity fields that would disturb the
measurements, but it should indeed be sufficient to determine the mass
of a distant planetary system and whether something as massive as a
gas giant is there, I think.

Yes, given all the "background graviton noise" perhaps up to 10 parsecs.

Within a system, you should be able to get very good surface detail on any planet.

 

[phavoc]

Hey if we can detect gravity at half a light second real time maybe we could use that, a sort of binary comms system maybe. Pulses short and long like morse. Maybe we could remove the comms delay.

Wait this sounds familiar. Have I read a book where this happens, a series of novels perhaps

Nimitz called and said he's not amused at your statement.

 

[locarno24]

Bah. Give him some celery and send him on his way.

Within a system, you should be able to get very good surface detail on any planet.

Depends. I can imagine that you can get a gravetic picture of a planet from an orbital distance away, but the same huge gravity well that makes it easy to spot might well make it difficult to see any detail unless you're in orbit.

 

[rust]

I can imagine that you can get a gravetic picture of a planet from an orbital distance away, but the same huge gravity well that makes it easy to spot might well make it difficult to see any detail unless you're in orbit.

I did a little research on gravimetrics for my setting, as it is one of the ve-
ry few methods that can be used to map the seafloor of a planet without
actually going there.

It seems to me that an instrument that uses gravitics to measure the mass
of objects would not be a good choice if one wanted to gain informations
on a distant planet's surface details, because the result would probably be
much more like a geoid than a useful map.

Just take a look what Earth looks like with gravimetrics, here the famous
"Potsdam Potato" geoid:
http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/portal/gfz/Public+Relations/M40-Bildarchiv/04+Bildergalerie+GRACE/00_Bildergalerie_Kartoffel/GFZ-00-G-10_helm050224a_eigencg01c_lw_4800x4800_rgb

 

[DFW]

It seems to me that an instrument that uses gravitics to measure the mass
of objects would not be a good choice if one wanted to gain informations
on a distant planet's surface details, because the result would probably be
much more like a geoid than a useful map.

Using current tech yes. Using grav tech, no.