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This idea keeps being brought up and people keep reminding everyone that for all intents and purposes this is the closest to a cartoon supervillain death ray th
by Tade0 4y ago
This idea keeps being brought up and people keep reminding everyone that for all intents and purposes this is the closest to a cartoon supervillain death ray that we can create.
- Aeolun 4y agoI think the important point is that we’re reasonably certain we can create it.
- taneq 4y agoYes but could we please not? Orbital death rays for power generation seem like a bad idea when we have options like rooftop solar and wind turbines.
- vegetablepotpie 4y agoRight, but what do we do when we’ve covered every surface of the earth with solar panels and wind turbines? We’ll need to move into space sooner or later if we want to continue exponential growth.
- taneq 4y agoWe'll just have to clear some area, I suggest the quickest way would be with the giant orbital heat beam! :D (100% agree that getting into space is important, and that if we want to continue exponential growth we'll need more than one planet. In fact, we'll need more than all the planets and we fairly rapidly (in cosmic terms) hit the point where the available volume of our light cone isn't enough. Maybe indefinite exponential growth isn't something we should feel entitled to...)
- gibolt 4y agoWe're nowhere close to that. Covering all land in solar would be ~100x our current energy needs, and then we still have ocean (most of the surface) available.