3 ms·
The worst case is orbitals will require some active stationkeeping. If your civilization goes the route of interstellar highways well you already have the abil
by cletus 4y ago
The worst case is orbitals will require some active stationkeeping.
If your civilization goes the route of interstellar highways well you already have the ability to focus a large amount of power on a sail of some sort to give propulsion. You could use exactly the same thing to correct orbits.
It's also worth noting that orbitals around the Sun are a whole lot bigger volume than orbits around the Earth. LEO orbits have a radius of 6500-7000km. The Earth is 150,000,000km from the Sun so the radius of that is about 8 orders of magnitude more.
If you assume orbits between Venus and Mars and include orbits off the Solar plane, the math for a full Dyson swarm the math (IIRC) works out to a mean distance between orbitals of around 100,000km, even with trillions of them.
- ncmncm 4y agoProbably all the orbits are well off the ecliptic, and they turn off their lasers when near it, to keep travel within the ecliptic safe. Stray light from all those x-ray lasers blasting in all directions 24/7 ought to make anything like this easy to spot.