WE TOUCHED A F*CKING STAR!
- Thread starter TheMysteriousGX
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OK, but have you heard about the most recent billionaire to go on a suborbital flight?
Realistically, we'd probably dismantle the planet mercury. It's relatively close to the sun and almost entirely made of metal and silicates (i.e. glass). Long term, a better solution would be to take all the matter we need from the sun itself, since 99.8% of all matter in the solar system is in the sun. Paradoxically, removing mass from the sun would actually increase its lifespan, making it more sustainable for a civilization thinking in the extreme long term.
But yeah, a Dyson sphere (as in a rigid sphere) is not a good idea for a whole bunch of reasons. Beyond the impossibly massive material strength required, the main issue is that a solid sphere wouldn't be orbiting the star inside it, which means it wouldn't be stable. That's not to say they will never exist, but they'd only ever be the product of a hyper-advanced civilization flexing by building something ridiculous. That said, hyper advanced civilizations of that nature would probably be quite bored, so who knows.
The more likely and practical option is that future humans would end up building habitats orbiting the sun and collecting solar power with giant collectors. Over time, they'd build more and more habitats with bigger and bigger collectors until eventually, thousands of years down the line, they were collecting a significant proportion of the sun's energy output. At some point in that whole journey, the idea of living on planets at all is probably going to start to look very silly.
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I mean... that's cool and all, but why are the ASPCA and St. Jude's asking for donations from every Tom, Dick and Henriette to save God's Creatures and battle cancer while we're spending to the tune of billions to get close to a hot ball in space? I hate to be the antithesis to excitement surround scientific breakthroughs, but whenever we do something like this, I'm instantly reminded that we've got more than our fair share of problems right here on Earth that substantively meaningless curiosities about space should probably take a back seat to. Like, whatever they spent "touching a star," would have been great spent on building some low-income housing or mitigating exorbitant medical expenses for people, but that's the altruistic hippy in me talking. Personally, I feel the sooner more of you assholes get off this rock and leave me here alone, the better. So go fondle your stars and populate Mars; I'll be Mad Maxing it down here with the rest of the fucks too poor and scared of space travel to be bothered pondering its wonders.
Unlike billionaire wankery regarding space colonization or Mars, this is ultimately basic research: foundational research about how the single greatest power source in the solar system works can have huge downward effects. Not least of which is solar flare formation and prediction, helping prevent satellite damage and power grid disruptions
Could that $1.5 billion dollars have been better spent on ~150 apartment buildings? Distinct maybe, at least short term
Could that $1.5 billion dollars have been better spent on ~150 apartment buildings? Distinct maybe, at least short term
Um...even assuming some Star Trek bullshit that could spontaneously fuse hydrogen into the element of our choice, we'd deplete the entire solar system's raw material and not finish it...including the entire Oort cloud. And the Sun, the entire point of the endeavor. So, we'd have just a giant sphere in the middle of space, serving absolutely no purpose.
The maths have already been done, based upon the estimated total mass of the solar system, Sun included, and the surface area a 1 AU Dyson sphere. It could be done with just the total mass of the solar system...we'd just end up with an approximately six-inch-thick sphere of material with a density of...wood. Lightweight wood. In other words, not even dense or of tensile strength enough to resist its own gravity. Forget about doing anything with it.
To actually build a Dyson sphere with any functionality, we'd need to cannibalize another nearby solar system entirely and transport that mass back to Earth, before we got into our Star Trek matter transmogrification bullshit. And if we had the scientific and technological capacity to do that, we wouldn't need a friggin' Dyson sphere in the first place.
A Dyson swarm of solar energy collectors would be the only way to achieve...anything, really.
EDIT: The game Stellaris, as far as I know, has the most "realistic" depiction of what it would take to build one, and the cost of it in terms of technological achievement, materials, political will, and time. It takes a galaxy-spanning civilization at its scientific and social apex that has specialized in megastructure building (and little if nothing else), with access to dozens if not hundreds of solar systems' worth of resources, to even start construction of a Dyson sphere...and to complete the damn thing requires a century of total economic mobilization. Which means the galaxy, and the civilization building it, have to remain politically and socially stable (and comparatively peaceful) that entire time...no small feat indeed.
There's a reason it -- and other megaprojects -- are soft win conditions. I love megaproject civs in Stellaris, but by the time you can build the damn things you don't really need them and they're basically just there as vanity projects to have after satisfying other soft win conditions. And of all of them, Dyson spheres are probably the least useful.
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I think the exact same thing when considering the staggering amounts of money that goes flooding into the entertainment industry every year that could be funding space programs.
If it sates your skepticism, remember research like this expands our knowledge of solar weather...which in turn helps us predict and counter-act events like solar storms and coronal mass ejections. Another solar storm like the Carrington event (which wasn't even actually that big), in the contemporary world, would be one of the most destructive and costliest global disasters imaginable, save climate change and nuclear holocaust.
We had a near-miss of a comparable CME back in 2012, and hell, we had an M-class CME hit last night...so if your internet was fucked up last night and this morning, that's probably why.
Solar storm warning: NASA predicts it will impact Earth before Christmas
Radio disruptions and GPS issues could ensue.
www.pennlive.com
Technically we're already a partial Dyson swarm
Well, there's this
Military–entertainment complex - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Probably because like most charities these are more interested in lining their own pockets than they are actually doing anything. We've spent trillions of dollars and decades and are still fighting cancer when we should've eradicated most if not all types of cancer by now with the supposed effort we've been putting into it.
A few billion dollars in advancements in science are going to end up doing far far more good than that same amount of money will ever do on housing or medical expenses and such. The new technologies developed as a direct result of striving to accomplish this and what they find out from it are going to accomplish a great deal more.
Besides, ultimately the human race is going to need to figure out how to get off this rock and colonize space which we're going to have to do eventually. Research like this is going to help ensure the survival of the entire species.
