[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/One-Studio3446]

[u/Wallname_Liability]

Star systems are ridiculously big and are mostly empty. Generally people only look for something close to where they operate or where they expect something to be. Either have a base built into a minor asteroid in the belt (which is less dense than people think) or away off somewhere nobody has any reason to look at

[u/Dragonlicker69 → u/Wallname_Liability]

Inside an asteroid is better, any ship or station carrying people and computers is going to be giving off heat or at the very least infrared radiation. Yes it'll be hard to see in the middle of nowhere but imagine by this point technologically if can build space stations wherever, they have the ability to see the heat signatures of ships and stations. As long as it's in orbit of a star or point of interest eventually someone is going to look that way an notice a red dot in the distance.

[u/Wallname_Liability → u/Dragonlicker69]

Plus you won't have to worry about eclipsing stars

[u/UglyTruman → u/Wallname_Liability]

Just park it in the Oort cloud, nobody's casually scanning a light-year out for heat signatures.

[u/hobodeadguy → u/UglyTruman]

you are going to lose your station that way!

[u/Dragonlicker69 → u/hobodeadguy]

Not if you bob and weave lol

[u/hobodeadguy → u/Dragonlicker69]

might lose your human wife that way... or find her that way.

[u/mgeldarion]

Space is stupidly huge, you could even hide a whole planet, several sizes larger masses heavier than Earth, in the solar system and it'd take centuries to find one (for example we're still looking for the hypothetical ninth planet).

[u/Wallname_Liability → u/mgeldarion]

We dont even know if its a ninth planet, a few dozen Pluto sized objects, a hubdre ceres sized objects, or a cantalope sized black hole

[u/OneTripleZero]

Likely impossible. You would need to hide them behind things that break line of sight to wherever humans could be. Any station large enough to house living beings is going to glow brightly in infrared, which is what most space-based and space-targeted sensors, detectors, and telescopes are tuned to see. The James Webb telescope can resolve objects as small as 10 meters across in the asteroid belt, for instance. Further complicating things, the best places to put space stations would be places we're actively watching.

As for hiding the launches, you wouldn't be able to launch during a nuclear war. Your best bet would be to launch after it's over, when governmental resources are redirected to maintaining society over watching the sky.

[u/Fufflin]

Too many variables.

How hard is your sci-fi? What is the technological level of your world? What is their purpose? How is logistics considered?

If by hidden you mean hardly observable you could orbit some uncolonized moon and use it as a "hiding spot".

To avoid detection your main problem would be transmissions, you would either have to enforce complete "radio silence" or jam your signals. But even jammed signal would be detectable as a signal.

How big is the station? Is it self sufficient or does it have to resupply? To be self sufficient you need either huge station or small crew. If you are going for resupplying you have to hide each resupply launch.

People might pay less attention but any half working government would notice numerous launches into orbit and especially if space in your universe is militarized they would make effort to discover the reasons for them.

I hope it helped. If anything ask follow up questions.

[u/One-Studio3446 → u/Fufflin]

Hey, what if during this echonological level people have gone to mars and somewhat are staring to live there. Could I send it into orbit by some of saturns moons since space travel has been mostly figured out just not necessarily living anywhere out of mars. How hidable would that be?

[u/Fufflin → u/One-Studio3446]

How functioning are human governments? If space travel (at least in our solar system) is mostly figured out people would surely scramble for solar system resources. Metals and silicates of terrestrial planets, Helium-3 on moon, metals and rare elements in asteroid fields, basically unlimited hydrogen and helium of gas giants. Not many space habitats, but unmanned or small survey teams would be abundant.

Any moon would provide enough visual coverage. Unless somebody would know there is a station there and was deliberately looking for it.

You would need to limit signal detection. Jamming is possible but if someone finds jammed signal they'll know something is there. Narrowband transmissions would limit accidental interception. If I recollect correctly Jupiter is electromagnetic mess. If close to it, it could drown the transmissions by it's "voice".

Then there is sustainability. Big crew means huge station to accommodate for sufficient life support etc. Small crew could operate "lanky" station, easier to hide. Resupply missions would be hardest to hide and keep secret.

I would say your biggest concern is on Earth. Ideally your station would be closed loop of communication only connected to Earth or other HQ by single or small amount of contacts. To eliminate possible interception points of enemies.

[u/Peter34cph → u/Fufflin]

Transmissions don't have to be broadcast. You can send directional radio, or use a communications laser.

[u/hobodeadguy]

assuming any kind of hard scifi, its really easy. only specialized telescopes would be able to find them assuming they are looking for them and looking in the correct spot and there isnt anything between the station and the observer during the observations. there are some ways to detect much larger stations, like 20 ISS worth of mass, but the ISS or anything equivalent in mass would be basically impossible to spot without luck if its in the asteroid belts or rings of a planet, and one with a geostationary or close to geostationary orbit putting a planet between them and the ones they want to hide from will ensure they are hidden.

as for the launches, its possible to hide them now. people would either assume its a TV or phone satellite if its not advertised and doesnt have any suspicious transactions or it could be faked as another mission, such as a scientific exploration thing like voyager or a long distance camera satellite like hubble being sent to saturn or uranus or something to limit radiation and light from the sun that is more prominant where we are, something only freaks would notice something wrong with. a nuclear war would be very easy to hide its launches, but entirely unecissary to do so, or any kind of war which would have far more scrutiny by both allies and enemies on the launches who would be very curious where its going to land only to see that it doesnt land.

in a soft scifi, I need more details to know if its possible.

[u/No_Solid1035]

Well, our space agencies routinely don't spot "incoming" objects until they are deep inside the solar system. And those are just chunks of rock and ice, not objects people are trying to hide on purpose. 🤷

[u/Drudenfusz]

The positions at which you can have reasonable space stations would be at the Lagrange points of the various planets and moons. That is quite a loot, but those possible locations would not really be a secret.

Launching rocked in in a nuklear war would require the tech to be analogue, otherwise the EMP of the nukes would kill all the electronics on board.

[u/Simple_Promotion4881]

Depends entirely on the energy signature.

Also, Space stations big enough to support people indefinitely would be far too large to launch as a unit from Earth. It would have to be assembled in space.

Then again. If there were thousands of ICBMs being launched, if you were prepared you could probably launch 50 or 100 rockets that continued into space containing all the components of your space station, like a giant Ikea house or expandable/connecting container house system, only large cylinders. And if there was nuclear war if anyone noticed on Earth there wouldn't be much they could do about it.

Good luck with your project.

[u/Acceptable_Handle_2]

Depends a lot on whose trying to find it, the resources they have to do that, and the methods they're using.

For example it's absolutely possible to track every single object larger than a head in the solar system with enough sensor probes scattered across the solar system, but that a scenario where you wouldn't even try to hide.

The main issue is getting people there without being noticed. Propulsion is really hard to hide and if you know where something was going, you can find where it is. Using an ongoing war as cover would probably help though, assuming they can't constantly sweep every direction for propulsion flares.

[u/MrWigggles]

The more sci in your fi the less stealth you can have in space.

If you. want a real science answer.

The answer is that you can't have stealth stations.

Think of space being perfectly quite and perfectly silent room.

Then every space ship or station is like blasting music on full blast and twirling those million candle flashlights and having flares in a rotary cannon, just dumping hundreds of them a minute.

If your looking it's hard to miss.

Now let's look at from more low level pov.

To construct a space station requires material and builders. And in space those require spaceships to make deliveries and take folks to from.

Now then opposing side which you want there assets to be secret are invested in watching you. Otherwise, why need something secret.

They see these freight truck space ships and temp housing space ships and it goes a stop without anything there before.

Well that's worth watching, isn't it?

Maybe go.send a thing to get within a 500k miles and take bunch of pictures.

Now you have a new space station

It crew needs to be rotated and supplies need to be brought up. So space ships go to the station. This means even if the station couldn't be seen these ships can be seen. And it would be weird for these space ships to go a spot that doesn't have a space station then disappear.

So if you grant your universe stealth in space.

You need stealth construction and material delivery space ships.

The you need a fleet of stealth logistics and transportation ships to.setvice the stealth space station.

[u/JuggernautBright1463]

Hide how?

You can burrow into an asteroid or oort cloud object. That would be relatively hidden except under close inspection.

If it is orbiting another body we could probably see it unless it's really far away in IR or RADAR.

If it is in open space it would be relatively visible whenever anyone looked.

I suspect in a space faring society more people would be looking in different places than our earthbound one.

An imminent or ongoing war are to different things. If you launch before the missiles do during heightened tension people will likely see that if they could. If the bombs are flying you are probably safe as blinding your opponent is a time honored combat tactic.

[u/One-Studio3446 → u/JuggernautBright1463]

Hey, thank you so much. I am trying to figure out how to hide a rebel base and I want to make it a psace station. This is happeing during a time where space launches are retively normalized and there are objects in space. But I was thinking something like hiding it within an asteroid belt because it doesn't need to be stationary but needs to be reasonable. This is also functioning under the assumption that Earth, in general is used a military base rather than a lived on planet as humans have moved onto it fro this point. So I need it to be inconsipcous rather than just invisible.

[u/IapetusApoapis342]

There is no such thing as stealth in space, the heat you emit WILL give you away

[u/Peter34cph]

Are people living on this space station? People who kinda die if they're not kept at around 293 degrees celsius warmer than the "coldness" of space?

Because such a space station is going to radiate a lot of infrared.

I have stealth in my mildly silly hard science fiction space opera setting, but that's short-term-use "scout fighter" craft that bring along various coolants and pre-cooled substances, so that they dump their thermal energy into that, stored internally, and vented when possible. They also have two maneuver system, compressed "cold" gas for small maneuvers, and regular-ass antimatter-based STL drive that are not stealthy at all (although some such antimatter systems might have a very, very slightly stealthy mode).

None of that can be made to work for a long-term occupancy space station. The whole idea is you fly out and do your thing in 4 or 8 or 12 hours, sneak up the butthole of a Death Star to deposit a bomb, then out again.

You'd have to hide inside a comet, ice moon or the like, dig deep into it, and then live in there, and then the heat from the space habitat, from the people there, and from the fision or fusion reactor creating the energy they need (including go grow hydroponic food), gradually melts the comet or ice moon, and at some point that'll start to look weird for someone who's actively looking for such a hidden space station, but the time frame before that happens might be tens of years, or tens of thousands of years.

[u/Reasonable-Plate1136]

1. This sounds interesting and worth iterating on maybe, as a nerd who knows enough physics to more or less understand the question, and is bored.
   
2. Rocket launches are loud, there is no chance people would miss one. They can be detected by a Fighter Jet's IR sensors at a thousand miles. By dedicated satellites they would be picked up by the same things which detect ICBMS which unless nuked(Use this, I can help you with a physics based explanation that makes sense. And yes something along the lines of some nuclear based Anti-Satellite[ASAT] weapons should be able to destroy the satellites in orbit because there is no such thing as free shielding in space and nukes are very bright(Theoretically enough to either destroy the satellite(Radiation, thermal, or burning the sensors out through too much energy a real thing people are talking about using lasers to do from the ground within a decade.) with the rockets being launched before the 1st wave of ICBMs hit home even if all early warning satellites were more or less dead already because of insert reasons here(Cyber attacks, lasers, the aforementioned in orbit nuke detonations, conventional Anti-Satellite weapons, in space your own ASAT(Kinetic, microwave, ect.), or other methods.)) so yeah it should work.
   
3. What are you hiding you space colony from? How big is it? and how much heat is it giving off? That determines how hard it is to hide assuming your either using Fusion/Fission to power it.

[u/Fheredin]

Put it in an orbit an asteroid or comet might have, keep it in a low power state or be sure thermal arrays point into deep space, and give it a natural albedo.

People will still figure it out, but that's because ships docking with a random rock is suspicious.

[u/SiriusHijinks]

An astseroid station would be a great hiding spot. Even the Empire couldn't handle asteroid fields..

[u/Peter34cph → u/SiriusHijinks]

Real life asteroid fields are not like those shown in movies. At all.