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Dyson was a creative genius but there's far too much hero worship. Some of the beliefs he tried to spread were stupid bordering on dangerous, like that there's
by Causality1 6y ago
Dyson was a creative genius but there's far too much hero worship. Some of the beliefs he tried to spread were stupid bordering on dangerous, like that there's no reason to worry or do anything about climate change because new technology will magically solve all our problems.
- teh_infallible 6y agoI have always thought, and still think that Dyson Spheres are an absurd idea.
- thelastinuit 6y agoChallenge accepted! I’ll build a D-Sphere or at least the foundation for the next generation.
- gumby 6y agoWhat about just building a ring then? There’s probably enough material in this solar system to do that. The sphere is merely a Gedankenexperiment, taking some factors to their logical extrema. Nothing wrong with that.
- willis936 6y agoThe first part of Larry Niven’s Ringworld explains why not. The structure requires materials so strong that even well-read sci-fi writers need to put in placeholder magic materials in.
- Causality1 6y agoI think if we could, we wouldn't need to. A ringworld has most of the downsides of living on a planetary surface plus many more. For the same investment in materials and energy you could build a fleet of orbiting habitats that wouldn't be vulnerable to the kind of centralized threats a ringworld would be.
- T-A 6y agoDyson's suggestion was actually a swarm, not a solid sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_swarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_swarm
- zaroth 6y ago> because new technology will magically solve all our problems. Well, if you call putting 10 million tons of diffractive moondust into orbit at L1 “magical”, then he’ll probably turn out to be right.
- mpoteat 6y agoHow much fuel would lifting 10 million tons of dust into high orbit require? Probably more than we have the ability to access. Sounds magical to me!
- unchocked 6y agoImpossible until it’s inevitable. The material is available at low deltaV from near-earth asteroids. Though it’s better fabricated into a giant solar sail of a sunshade.
- Geezus_42 6y agoConsidering it's moondust and thus has to come from the moon, also assuming rocket engines have gotten more efficient since we last sent people to the moon and taking into consideration the much lower gravity of the moon. I would hazard to guess that it would take about the same or less fuel than an Apollo mission. Also, once the container was launched from the serfice of the moon you could probably propel it using a light sail and some sort of solar powered beam thus only needing fuel for take off and deceleration. But that's all just guesses based on unbacked assumptions.
- Causality1 6y agoExactly what thought process leads you to believe we can put 10 million tons of dust into solar orbit for the same amount of fuel we used to send 1/222,222 of that mass to the moon?
- Geezus_42 6y agoYou don't need to lift it from earth gravity therefore less fuel is required.