5 ms·

See Dyson Sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

by jupp0r 8mo ago

moralestapia 8mo ago
Yeah, that's the point ... it's stupid to believe humanity is capable of deploying that much infrastructure. We cannot do even 0.01% of it.
- entropie 8mo ago
  But the factory ~~can~~must grow.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- tlb 8mo ago
  What do you think the limiting factor is? I don't see why we can't scale manufacturing of satellites up as far as we want. If we mine out a substantial fraction of the mass of the earth, we can go harvest asteroids or something.
  - skywhopper 8mo ago
    The physical amount of material in the solar system is a pretty big limiting factor.
    - willturman 8mo ago
      Yeah, but besides not having the physical amount of material available in the solar system, or the availability of any technology to transfer power generated to a destination where it can serve a meaningful purpose in the foreseeable future, or having the political climate or capital necessary for even initiating such an effort, or not being able to do so without severely kneecapping the habitability of our planet, there are aren't really any meaningful barriers that I can see.
      - ShroudedNight 8mo ago
        Are you suggesting that beggars would ride, if only wishes were horses!?
  - singleshot_ 8mo ago
    There are only so many people who can make satellites; there are only so many things to make satellites out of; and there are only so many orbits to put them in. There are only so many reasons why a person might want a satellite. There are only so many ways of placing satellites in orbit and each requires some amount of energy, and we have access to a finite amount of energy over time. Finally, if we limited ourselves to earth-based raw materials, we would eventually reach a point where the remaining mass of the earth would have less gravitational effect on the satellite fleet than the fleet itself, which would have deleterious effects on the satellite fleet. Seven reasons are intuitive; I’m sure there are many others.
    - tlb 8mo ago
      People can build a factory that makes satellites. And then a factory that makes factories to make satellites. There is plenty of material in the solar system (see my other response), and plenty of orbits, and launch capability can scale with energy harvested so the launch rate can grow exponentially. Lots of people will probably decide they don't want any more satellites. But it only takes a few highly determined people to get it done anyway.
      - moralestapia 8mo ago
        >Just imbest[1] and it will grow exponentially. That's how that argument sounds like, particularly when you hear it from someone who is as broke as it can be. It's easy to type those ideas in a comment, or a novel, or a scientific paper ... bring them to reality, oh surprise! that's the hard part. 1: The dumb version to invest
    - SJC_Hacker 8mo ago
      > Finally, if we limited ourselves to earth-based raw materials, we would eventually reach a point where the remaining mass of the earth would have less gravitational effect on the satellite fleet than the fleet itself, which would have deleterious effects on the satellite fleet. The Earth's crust has an average thickness of about 15-20 km. Practically we can only get at maybe the top 1-2 km, as drill bits start to fail the deeper you go. The Earth's radius is 6,371 km. So even if we could somehow dug up entire crust we can get to and flung it into orbit, that would barely be noticeable to anything in orbit.
  - bluescrn 8mo ago
    After a few decades, you need to start replacing all the solar panels. And the robot army being used to do the construction and resource extraction will likely have a much shorter lifespan. So needs to be self-replicating/repairing/recycling.
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    >> Dyson Sphere > What do you think the limiting factor is? You need to be able to harness enough raw material and energy to build something that can surround the sun. That does not exist in the solar system and we do not yet have the means to travel further out to collect, move, and construct such an incredibly huge structure. It seems like a fantasy.
    - tlb 8mo ago
      The inner planets contain enough mass to create a shell of 1 AU radius with mass of 42 kg/m^2. That sounds like a plausible thickness and density for a sandwich of photovoltaics - GPUs - heat sinks. You don't build a rigid shell of course, you build a swarm of free-floating satellites in a range of orbits. See https://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html#ENOUGH https://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html#ENOUGH for numbers.
      - fluoridation 8mo ago
        Great. Now run the numbers to find the energy required to disassemble the planets and accelerating the pieces to their desired locations. For reference, it takes over 10 times of propellant and oxidant mass to put something in LEO.
        tlb 8mo ago
        The burned propellant and oxygen mass (as H2O and CO2) almost all ends up back in the atmosphere when you launch to LEO, so you can keep running electrolysis (powered by solar) to convert it back to fuel.
        fluoridation 8mo ago
        Sure, but if we're talking about solar engineering, that mass is going to be dispersed in orbit around the sun. You're not going to be reaccumulating that any time soon.
      - FridgeSeal 8mo ago
  - sollewitt 8mo ago
    In 2026? Grift.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    > What do you think the limiting factor is? I don't see why we can't scale manufacturing of satellites up as far as we want. A reason. I'm sure that theoretically it's possible, assuming infinite money and an interest to do so. But literally, why would we? There's no practical ways to get the power back on earth, it's cheaper to build a solar field, etc. And I don't believe datacenters in space are viable, cost wise. Not until we can no longer fit them on earth, AND demand is still increasing.
chr15m 8mo ago
Dyson's paper was literally written in jest.
- Banditoz 8mo ago
  What do you mean?
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    Have you read the paper itself, not just summaries of the idea? It's obvious from the way he wrote it, dripping in sarcasm. Talking about "Malthusian principles" and "Lebensraum", while hand waving away any common sense questions about how the mass of Jupiter would even be smeared into a sphere around the sun, just saying that he can conceive of it and therefore we should spend public money looking for it. He's having a lark. Also, he literally said it was a joke, and was miffed that he was best know for something he didn't take seriously.
  - ketralnis 8mo ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM
  - Rzor 8mo ago
    >In an interview with Robert Wright in 2003, Dyson referred to his paper on the search for Dyson spheres as "a little joke" and commented that "you get to be famous only for the things you don't think are serious" [...] To be fair, he later added this: >in a later interview with students from The University of Edinburgh in 2018, he referred to the premise of the Dyson sphere as being "correct and uncontroversial".[13] In other interviews, while lamenting the naming of the object, Dyson commented that "the idea was a good one", and referred to his contribution to a paper on disassembling planets as a means of constructing one. Sources are in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
    - chr15m 8mo ago
      Thanks for pointing out those follow ups. Interesting stuff! > correct and uncontraversial From the original quote it is clear he was referring to the idea of aliens being detectable by infrared because they will absorb all of their sun's energy. Later in the same paragraph he says: > Unfortunately I went on to speculate about possible ways of building a shell, for example by using the mass of Jupiter... > These remarks about building a shell were only order-of-magnitude estimates, but were misunderstood by journalists and science-fiction writers as describing real objects. The essential idea of an advanced civilization emitting infrared radiation was already published by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker in 1937. So the Dyson Sphere is a rhetorical vehicle to make an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a description of a thing that he thought could physically exist. Full quote from the video cited before "the idea was a good one": > science fiction writers got hold of this phrase and imagined it then to be a spherical rigid object. And the aliens would be living on some kind of artificial shell. a rigid structure surrounding a star. which wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but then in any case, that's become then a favorite object of science fiction writers. They call it the Dyson sphere, which was a name I don't altogether approve of, but anyway, I mean that's I'm stuck with it. But the idea was a good one. Again he explicitly says this "wasn't exactly what I had in mind." This one hedges a bit more and could be interpreted as his saying the idea of a Dyson Sphere is a good one. He may have meant that in the sense of it being a good science fiction idea though, and he subsequently goes on to talk about that. The Dyson Sphere is good for order-of-magnitude calculations about hypothetical aliens, and also for selling vapourware to the types of people who uncritically think that vapourware is real.

See Dyson Sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

by jupp0r 8mo ago

See Dyson Sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

Yeah, that's the point ... it's stupid to believe humanity is capable of deploying that much infrastructure. We cannot do even 0.01% of it.

entropie 8mo ago
But the factory ~~can~~must grow.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
tlb 8mo ago
What do you think the limiting factor is? I don't see why we can't scale manufacturing of satellites up as far as we want. If we mine out a substantial fraction of the mass of the earth, we can go harvest asteroids or something.
- skywhopper 8mo ago
  The physical amount of material in the solar system is a pretty big limiting factor.
  - willturman 8mo ago
    Yeah, but besides not having the physical amount of material available in the solar system, or the availability of any technology to transfer power generated to a destination where it can serve a meaningful purpose in the foreseeable future, or having the political climate or capital necessary for even initiating such an effort, or not being able to do so without severely kneecapping the habitability of our planet, there are aren't really any meaningful barriers that I can see.
    - ShroudedNight 8mo ago
      Are you suggesting that beggars would ride, if only wishes were horses!?
- singleshot_ 8mo ago
  There are only so many people who can make satellites; there are only so many things to make satellites out of; and there are only so many orbits to put them in. There are only so many reasons why a person might want a satellite. There are only so many ways of placing satellites in orbit and each requires some amount of energy, and we have access to a finite amount of energy over time. Finally, if we limited ourselves to earth-based raw materials, we would eventually reach a point where the remaining mass of the earth would have less gravitational effect on the satellite fleet than the fleet itself, which would have deleterious effects on the satellite fleet. Seven reasons are intuitive; I’m sure there are many others.
  - tlb 8mo ago
    People can build a factory that makes satellites. And then a factory that makes factories to make satellites. There is plenty of material in the solar system (see my other response), and plenty of orbits, and launch capability can scale with energy harvested so the launch rate can grow exponentially. Lots of people will probably decide they don't want any more satellites. But it only takes a few highly determined people to get it done anyway.
    - moralestapia 8mo ago
      >Just imbest[1] and it will grow exponentially. That's how that argument sounds like, particularly when you hear it from someone who is as broke as it can be. It's easy to type those ideas in a comment, or a novel, or a scientific paper ... bring them to reality, oh surprise! that's the hard part. 1: The dumb version to invest
  - SJC_Hacker 8mo ago
    > Finally, if we limited ourselves to earth-based raw materials, we would eventually reach a point where the remaining mass of the earth would have less gravitational effect on the satellite fleet than the fleet itself, which would have deleterious effects on the satellite fleet. The Earth's crust has an average thickness of about 15-20 km. Practically we can only get at maybe the top 1-2 km, as drill bits start to fail the deeper you go. The Earth's radius is 6,371 km. So even if we could somehow dug up entire crust we can get to and flung it into orbit, that would barely be noticeable to anything in orbit.
- bluescrn 8mo ago
  After a few decades, you need to start replacing all the solar panels. And the robot army being used to do the construction and resource extraction will likely have a much shorter lifespan. So needs to be self-replicating/repairing/recycling.
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  >> Dyson Sphere > What do you think the limiting factor is? You need to be able to harness enough raw material and energy to build something that can surround the sun. That does not exist in the solar system and we do not yet have the means to travel further out to collect, move, and construct such an incredibly huge structure. It seems like a fantasy.
  - tlb 8mo ago
    The inner planets contain enough mass to create a shell of 1 AU radius with mass of 42 kg/m^2. That sounds like a plausible thickness and density for a sandwich of photovoltaics - GPUs - heat sinks. You don't build a rigid shell of course, you build a swarm of free-floating satellites in a range of orbits. See https://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html#ENOUGH https://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html#ENOUGH for numbers.
    - fluoridation 8mo ago
      Great. Now run the numbers to find the energy required to disassemble the planets and accelerating the pieces to their desired locations. For reference, it takes over 10 times of propellant and oxidant mass to put something in LEO.
      - tlb 8mo ago
        The burned propellant and oxygen mass (as H2O and CO2) almost all ends up back in the atmosphere when you launch to LEO, so you can keep running electrolysis (powered by solar) to convert it back to fuel.
        fluoridation 8mo ago
        Sure, but if we're talking about solar engineering, that mass is going to be dispersed in orbit around the sun. You're not going to be reaccumulating that any time soon.
    - FridgeSeal 8mo ago
- sollewitt 8mo ago
  In 2026? Grift.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  > What do you think the limiting factor is? I don't see why we can't scale manufacturing of satellites up as far as we want. A reason. I'm sure that theoretically it's possible, assuming infinite money and an interest to do so. But literally, why would we? There's no practical ways to get the power back on earth, it's cheaper to build a solar field, etc. And I don't believe datacenters in space are viable, cost wise. Not until we can no longer fit them on earth, AND demand is still increasing.

chr15m 8mo ago

Dyson's paper was literally written in jest.

Banditoz 8mo ago
What do you mean?
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  Have you read the paper itself, not just summaries of the idea? It's obvious from the way he wrote it, dripping in sarcasm. Talking about "Malthusian principles" and "Lebensraum", while hand waving away any common sense questions about how the mass of Jupiter would even be smeared into a sphere around the sun, just saying that he can conceive of it and therefore we should spend public money looking for it. He's having a lark. Also, he literally said it was a joke, and was miffed that he was best know for something he didn't take seriously.
- ketralnis 8mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM
- Rzor 8mo ago
  >In an interview with Robert Wright in 2003, Dyson referred to his paper on the search for Dyson spheres as "a little joke" and commented that "you get to be famous only for the things you don't think are serious" [...] To be fair, he later added this: >in a later interview with students from The University of Edinburgh in 2018, he referred to the premise of the Dyson sphere as being "correct and uncontroversial".[13] In other interviews, while lamenting the naming of the object, Dyson commented that "the idea was a good one", and referred to his contribution to a paper on disassembling planets as a means of constructing one. Sources are in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
  - chr15m 8mo ago
    Thanks for pointing out those follow ups. Interesting stuff! > correct and uncontraversial From the original quote it is clear he was referring to the idea of aliens being detectable by infrared because they will absorb all of their sun's energy. Later in the same paragraph he says: > Unfortunately I went on to speculate about possible ways of building a shell, for example by using the mass of Jupiter... > These remarks about building a shell were only order-of-magnitude estimates, but were misunderstood by journalists and science-fiction writers as describing real objects. The essential idea of an advanced civilization emitting infrared radiation was already published by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker in 1937. So the Dyson Sphere is a rhetorical vehicle to make an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a description of a thing that he thought could physically exist. Full quote from the video cited before "the idea was a good one": > science fiction writers got hold of this phrase and imagined it then to be a spherical rigid object. And the aliens would be living on some kind of artificial shell. a rigid structure surrounding a star. which wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but then in any case, that's become then a favorite object of science fiction writers. They call it the Dyson sphere, which was a name I don't altogether approve of, but anyway, I mean that's I'm stuck with it. But the idea was a good one. Again he explicitly says this "wasn't exactly what I had in mind." This one hedges a bit more and could be interpreted as his saying the idea of a Dyson Sphere is a good one. He may have meant that in the sense of it being a good science fiction idea though, and he subsequently goes on to talk about that. The Dyson Sphere is good for order-of-magnitude calculations about hypothetical aliens, and also for selling vapourware to the types of people who uncritically think that vapourware is real.