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LunaticBZ t1_jdwxewk wrote

A Dyson swarm, what the Dyson sphere original concept was.

Has none of these downsides. You get usable living space and energy production with each habitat, power satellite you build and you build it as much as you want/ have resources for.

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swazal t1_jdwg0bq wrote

Larry Niven’s Ringworld series has entered the chat

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AnotherDreamer1024 t1_jdwomix wrote

And like a Ring World, a Dyson Sphere is orbitably unstable. A solar flair or three and it's toast.

Not to mention, where are you going to get several Jupiters worth of construction material? All the mass in the solar system, excluding the sun and Jupiter, doesn't add up to another Jupiter.

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lezboyd t1_jdwwja8 wrote

Honestly, didn't read the article, it was a bit too long, but to further your argument, a Dyson sphere doesn't have to be a solid sphere encapsulating the star. One can theoretically put a swarm/lattice of 'dyson satellites' in orbit around the sun to achieve the same effect. What holds back the concept of a Dyson sphere as a valid energy source is not our satellite building tech or mining abilities, but that we don't yet know how to transmit this energy that's generated in Space onto Earth without frying it.

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LunaticBZ t1_jdx1lod wrote

Oh simple solution to not frying Earth with the energy.

Don't send it to Earth.

Most our industry and population will be living off world anyways.

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McFoogles t1_jdxdg4p wrote

Attention K2 readers: Learn the one secret K1 Civilizations don’t want you to know!

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CostcoTPisBest t1_jdytmue wrote

"We ran the numbers"

Yeah sure ya did. Conflating fantasy, wild assumptions with numerical claims is quite honestly laughable.

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cad908 OP t1_je0cgld wrote

ya know, it's a start. It's just accounting for the energy required for overcoming the binding energy, and shifting the material to different orbits, in order to get a sense of the scale involved. He said in the article there would be significant engineering challenges, yet to be worked out, obviously.

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RedshiftWarp t1_je15uey wrote

-Slaps top of Dyson sphere

“Nicoll-Beam generator is it’s Pronoun. “

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[deleted] t1_je1atxj wrote

I'm a firm believer that if you can build a dyson sphere you don't need a dyson sphere. You'd have figured something else out well before then.

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HealthyStonksBoys t1_jdz7fgj wrote

Dyson spheres don’t seem plausible. To build a structure so large would change the gravitational equilibrium of the star system.

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tagini t1_je05siw wrote

That's probably only a concern if you'd use Jupiter as resource.

I think they are plausible, but the real challenges lie more in the technology, logistics and perhaps more importantly the time-scale. Dismantling an entire planet for resources is going to take some wicked technology (mostly in space-faring and -hauling capability) but above all a really long time. The creation of the panels is probably trivial when we can dismantle a planet, but placing them where we need them is going to take a hell of a lot of time again, simply because of the vastness of space. I'd guess completion of a dyson sphere would take in the order of a few 1,000 years.

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