[OOC][PLOT] The Seventh Thread of Planning for Arc 1 - Arrivals

[Labster]

They're simply too big to show up anywhere that they'll be seen immediately.

If they're going to show up, they're going to show up offshore where nobody's going to notice them for a few days, even if they were to show up in the shipping lanes (which doesn't need to happen). And der Film shows that at least the sensha-do teams use Morse code for long-range communication - they aren't going to swamp the airwaves with voice or picture traffic.

Malleable Continuity still takes a big hit, but nobody on Earth notices immediately. We might even have the managers be informed of the new arrivals by the celestials.

Also,

Considering that at the end of The Academy City Job we'll have over nine thousand Misaka Sisters that we have to put somewhere for a few days, I expect those apartments will end up filled ...

"Hey, Anzu, can over 9000 girls borrow Yukari's camp-out skills and your forest for a week? Just stay out of storms for a while, please."

Speaking of storms, Zuikaku takes up about 6 pixels on a geostationary satellite like GOES-16, depending on how far it is from directly under the satellite.  The other ships could easily be 20+ pixels, and look like islands that move.  You know, unless they stay under clouds a lot.  The decks might end up inside a marine stratocumulus, so a bit foggy on top, but should still hide 'em.

So, let's talk horizons.  Assuming not terrible visibility, and ignoring refraction which could help visibility, Zuikaku's tower can be seen from √( 2 R-earth height )  (where Earth >> ship) = 87km away.  The deck can be seen from 74km away.  For a bigger ship like Ark Royal, it could be seen from 112km away.  Yes it will be hazy, and yes clouds can get in a way.  You've all seen mountain peaks from far away, right?

Oh, and that's from standing on land.  From one of the many planes that cross the ocean, you can see quite a bit farther.

I mean I hate to be the guy who says no but gosh, the scale.  Ships of this scale, if they were made of air, would be part of mesoscale meteorology, the same thing that studies thunderstorms.  Were we to stick Ark Royal in the ground balanced on her bow, her stern would be in the lower stratosphere (high latitudes), tropopause (mid latitudes), or upper troposphere in the ice clouds (tropics).  I'm used to thinking on these scales as a meteorologist.

The southern oceans would probably be the only place to escape detection, but gosh, I can't see these being secret longer than a week without cloaking devices.