Building a Dyson sphere


Technology

The Exchange

I just had a flash of genius. We need to turn the international space station into a three d printer that collects stellar hydrogen and can print a pipe entirely from captured protons. It can be set in motion to build a Taurus around the sun. It will take billions of years but you knew that...

Sovereign Court

Or we could strip mine every single solid stellar body in this solar system and perhaps make about a quarter of the Dyson sphere. We could make a Dyson cloud.

The Exchange

Hama wrote:
Or we could strip mine every single solid stellar body in this solar system and perhaps make about a quarter of the Dyson sphere. We could make a Dyson cloud.

That seems like a lot of effort when we can build something that will harvest stellar protons given off during it entire lifespan. Not like it will be of use by humans...it would be the Easter egg we leave for others to discover.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Or you can just go play in one on Star Trek Online.


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Hmmm...

What to do with more surface area than anyone could ever need? Okay... what to do with more energy than anyone could ever need (the entire output of the Sun...)? Hmmm... No real answers there... Not to mention it would be done so far into the future that humanity would be dust and gone for a very long time.

No. Let's discuss something far more relevant. Why not start building our Matryoshka brain?

Sovereign Court

Or a dyson ring?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Hama wrote:

Or a dyson ring?

Dyson Rings aren't really that much easier to build, although some of the maintennce problems are at least simpler. You are however going to need fuel for those jets to keep the ring centered on the host star since it's spinning much faster than orbital velocity. That and the little matter of finding some material that can take the stress. And making sure your neighborhood is kept clear of things that might strike the ring... at 700 miles per second.

Liberty's Edge

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Hama wrote:
Or we could strip mine every single solid stellar body in this solar system and perhaps make about a quarter of the Dyson sphere. We could make a Dyson cloud.

That's what Dyson was actually talking about, and he assumed they would grow organically rather than be purposely constructed.

Then there's the Dyson bubble concept, which appears in Schlock Mercenary as the Buuthandi. Buuthandi is a shortening of "Buut go buut-buut nnaa-nnaa cho handi," or "this was expensive to build." (Transliterated, for the linguist: <Expensive and expensive-expensive >expletive< we built.>)

The Exchange

Sissyl wrote:

Hmmm...

What to do with more surface area than anyone could ever need? Okay... what to do with more energy than anyone could ever need (the entire output of the Sun...)? Hmmm... No real answers there... Not to mention it would be done so far into the future that humanity would be dust and gone for a very long time.

No. Let's discuss something far more relevant. Why not start building our Matryoshka brain?

Something smaller? Okay. A Borg cube looks like it is made of pipes...and riker said it was beyond the ability of the federation to build one. If all it takes is a three d printer and stellar ejected protons i'm more awesome than the federation. Welcome to project Borg.


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What about a Dyson Water Slide?


What we need is a binary star system. Then we enclose each in a giant 10 sided die (complete with numbers). Every year the system has a percentage chance of working.

I still like the Ringworld concept. By the time you get to the point of building it you will have gotten around the problems of dealing with the extra matter in the system and propelling the Ring. (as well as all the other factors that Larry Niven has detailed.)

Dark Archive

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A Dyson sphere would be over-engineered for any sort of meaningful purpose.

Creating a cheap easily repaired membrane that absorbed a fraction of light passing through it instead, stretching over vast areas, and generating equally vast amounts of energy, should be more than adequate. If something flies through it, it slowly oozes back together through Brownian motion and seals the hole, instead of popping like a giant soap bubble. At higher levels of technology, it doesn't even have to made out of matter, but can just be some sort of energy field that absorbs some or all of the light striking it and generates power in the process over and above the energy needed to maintain the field.

It doesn't have to surround the entire sun, but can scale up over time, at first providing only enough power for it's own support systems, but as it expands, generating enough power from the light it's filtering that it can beam extra power around to other structures or habitats in space, or down to planetary surfaces. Sections of it could be built outside of Earth's orbit, so that people on Earth wouldn't even notice that it existed (although those on more distant planets might notice a 'shadowing' effect). Sections of it could be built *inside* Earth's orbital track, and filter / reduce sunlight impacting the Earth, in the event of a need to cut down the amount of solar radiation striking Earth's surface (due to ozone depletion or whatever, although that shouldn't be that hard to correct for a civilization capable of developing this sort of space-based solar-sail power generation technology).

A Dyson sphere is a fun theoretical construct, but wildly impractical, IMO, and totally not worth the multiple systems worth of material that would be needed to create one (and, in the time scale needed, would be a huge waste of time, since civilizations don't last that long, and suns have a finite lifespan anyway).

It's the 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' or 'can God create a sandwich so big that even He can't eat it?' of theoretical science, good for a fun discussion among stoned college students, but not terrible practical.


By the time we could do something like build a Dyson Sphere the nature of life, or at least intelligence is going to be something very different.

Barring the perspective of a vastly different kind of being seeing some utility in it, the need just won't be there.

There is a kind of problem with science fiction. They take something like the nature of trade in the age of sail and map that into interstellar trade for example.

But the amount of energy it take to change matter in a certain state to another is prohibitive. You might as well make it at the destination honestly.

By that I mean 1 kg on earth has a certain velocity and kinetic energy. I don't want to go too much into this, but bacically say we have a velocity of 40,000 m/s or something roughly in the direction of the Andromeda galaxy or something (yes, the earth rotates, and also around the sun, but our sun has a certain vector and that is the dominant portion).

Not only do you have to apply energy to go anywhere in a reasonable amount of time (barring hyperdrive or something), you will also have to apply energy so our hypothetical 1 kg of matter has the same state as a hypothetical planet around Sirius for example.

Just makes no sense. If you can traverse interstellar space, odds are you could make whatever you wanted on site, assuming you had the matter (and if you don't what are you doing there?), and the energy (hello Sirius or fusion or whatever).

Plus this doesn't consider the issue of a post singularity intelligence, it's nature, it's needs, and what it considers worth doing.

A Neanderthal might have felt handicapped if there were no flint handy. That doesn't mean much to us.

And I have no idea what an intelligence from the year 2525 might want or think. But I'm reasonably sure it won't be what I want.

Here is a snippet from a fascinating blog:

"Let me restate that important point. No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years. A word of warning: that power plant is going to run a little warm. Thermodynamics require that if we generated sun-comparable power on Earth, the surface of the Earth—being smaller than that of the sun—would have to be hotter than the surface of the sun! - See more at: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/#sthash.i ZGPeJIo.dpuf"

Reality is going to be nothing like Star Trek, Ringworld, Known Space or anything anyone has come up with yet. If anyone came close it was Iain Banks, and I kind of think he limited things so he could write things people would read.

The Exchange

The whole point here is that the sun provides the building material for the construction of whatever is being build. If the pipe has sufficient diameter it can be used to build a colossal space torus. The technology of three d printing using stellar ejected protons will revolutionize space colonization. Perhaps you would like to live in o'neil cylinders.


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Wait ... I thought we already had these?

Spoiler:
:-)


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Distant Scholar wrote:

Wait ... I thought we already had these?

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
That qualifies as a Dyson Sphere. Granted, it is not the type of Dyson Sphere that YD was talking about, but it IS a Dyson Sphere.

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Your momma's so fat, she contains sufficient mass to build a Dyson Sphere.


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Yo momma so old she was on the design commitee and cut the rope at the opening ceremony of the Dyson sphere.


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I have a Dyson vacuum cleaner,it harvests dust particles.....same thing.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
sunbeam wrote:

"Let me restate that important point. No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years. A word of warning: that power plant is going to run a little warm. Thermodynamics require that if we generated sun-comparable power on Earth, the surface of the Earth—being smaller than that of the sun—would have to be hotter than the surface of the sun! - See more at: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/#sthash.i ZGPeJIo.dpuf"

Reality is going to be nothing like Star Trek, Ringworld, Known Space or anything anyone has come up with yet. If anyone came close it was Iain Banks, and I kind of think he limited things so he could write things people would read.

The only thing that grows without restraint are diseases known as cancers. As long as we cling to the idea that endless growth is the operating paradigm, we can't be considered to be a long term proposition as a civilization.

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