Lurking field down... transmision begins
Was chatting last night to my housemate. The conversation moved (I honestly
cannot explian how...) round to Dyson spheres. And I suggested that possibly
the easiest way to create more living space in the correct orbit would be to
just shift a planet into the correct orbit. E.g., we just ease Venus a bit
further out and terraform it.
Anyone ever thought about this?
I look forward to your thoughts
> From: Richard Kirke
Um....look up the mass of Venus and its orbital speed. Look up Earth's orbital
speed, and calculate how much different it is from Venus's speed. You have to
put in the energy to change that mass by that speed. That's not a huge
project, nor a HHUUGGEE project....that's something where you'd need to put
banner paper in your printer to print out how huge it is.
> -----Original Message-----
That's not a huge project, nor a HHUUGGEE project....that's something where
you'd need to put banner paper in your printer to print out how huge it is.
> _______________________________________________
Piece of cake. Take a gas giant, gig giant magnetic accelerators as fusion
torches and fuel them from the atmosphere. Then just swing the gas giant into
a lower solar orbit, pick up Venus as a satellite, then move it back out.
Worked for moving Earth out of reach of Sol's expansion into a gas giant in
Niven's "World out of Time".
> Richard Kirke wrote:
> the correct orbit would be to just shift a planet into the correct
I think the Ancients in the Traveller universe used to do this kind of thing
all the time... Oh, and seed Humanity around known space, toss planets at each
other, and create pocket universes (but you didn't hear that from me).
> > -----Original Message-----
That's
> not a huge project, nor a HHUUGGEE project....that's something where
Ah, simple.
Has anyone got any giant magnetic accelerators?
Laserlight, you of course right. The amound of kinetic energy required to
shift venus is quite a lot. but then again, even in the Tuffleyverse large
starships are transported across the universe at speeds greater then C, and
that requires a lot of energy too.
> Piece of cake. Take a gas giant, gig giant magnetic accelerators as
Bolting them tightly around the edges of the Great Red Spot, I presume?
:-)
> even in the Tuffleyverse large starships are transported across the
Comparatively, it's "teeny, tiny starships". :-)
> On 29/07/2006, at 04:14 , Richard Kirke wrote:
> Was chatting last night to my housemate. The conversation moved (I
Easiest!?! Moving planets around implies a pretty colossal ability to
manipulate matter and energy. A civilisation that achieved it would have other
options that might well be "easier". Some of these options would be available
at *much* lower levels of mastery, and might almost be within our reach now.
1. A spherical cloud of "O'Niell Cylinder"-style orbital habitats
around the sun, in carefully chosen orbits not restricted to the plane of the
ecliptic. Such a cloud could be built up in incremental steps, adding living
space as required for relatively modest investment (compared with moving and
terraforming planets!).
Even two habitable Earth-sized planets would still intercept only the
most minute fraction of the sun's energy. A cloud of habitats could literally
"englobe" the sun. Since the internal environment of the habitats would be
essentially independent of their orbits (just add bigger solar mirrors further
from the sun), the cloud could be deeply layered until no solar energy was
wasted on interstellar space. It is this energy capture that Freeman Dyson
discussed in his famous paper
"Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red
Radiation" (Science, 1960). Dyson did *not* propose the solid contiguous
sphere round the sun to which his name is popularly misapplied. As Dyson
himself put it: "The form of 'biosphere' which I envisaged consists of a loose
collection or swarm of objects traveling on independent orbits around the
star."
2. Depending on the civilisation's level of mastery, very large orbital
habitats could become possible, without resorting to Ringworlds etc. Some of
the orbitals described in Iain Bank's
"Culture" novels are interesting. A few back-of-the-envelope
calculations suggests:
Imagine a gigantic ring with a cross-section like a U-shaped valley
(from the point of view of a hypothetical resident standing on the inside
surface of the ring), placed in a suitable orbit round the sun
(rather than encircling it), with the ring positioned edge-on to the
sun but inclined so that light can shine on the opposite inside surface. Make
the ring about 1,850,000km in radius, and the rotation
required to produce a pseudo-gravity of 1g would be one revolution
per Earth day, and the inclined, edge-on orientation would produce a
fairly natural day-night cycle. Make the ring 100km wide to provide
more than double the total surface area of the Earth...
> On Friday 28 July 2006 19:14, Richard Kirke wrote:
This is mentioned in passing in 'To Crush the Moon'[1] (which I'm reading at
the moment) by a couple of people who are talking about trying to make
more living space in the solar system. It's meant as a joke. :-) They
settle on squashing the moon to give it a decent surface gravity, since they
consider that much easier (given the technology they have available, it is).
Planets are big, and difficult to move. It might be a possible long term
project if you've got reactionless drives, but you've also got to worry about
stress on the planet's crust etc.
You would need a Type II civilisation[2] at the very least. The cloud of
habitats Robert describes is actually what a Dyson Sphere is, not a solid
shell (though many SF stories depict them as solid shells). Moving a planet
would probably be easier than a solid 'Dyson Sphere', but much harder than
Dyson's actual idea.
> Anyone ever thought about this?
Alternatively, you could ask Richard Seaton[3] for a hand. He was able to move
all the human habitable planets from one galaxy to another, just before
turning all the stars in the first galaxy supernova.
[1] 'To Crush the Moon', by Wil McCarthy. 4th book in a series,
'The Collapsium', 'Wellstone' and 'Lost in Transmission' are the first. About
a society with replicator technology.
[2] Type I: Can harness the energy of a planet.
Type II: Can harness the energy of a solar system. Type III: Can harness the
energy of a galaxy.
[3] EE 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series. The Skylark of Valeron was
pretty much a planet (with most of its mass given over to either shield
generators, armour or weapon systems).
Well, the teeny, tiny approache infinite mass as they approach C, while
requiring approaching-infinite energy to accellerate. Moving planets is
a
finite, though HUUUUUUUGE amount of energy. Greater-than-C seems to
indicate greater-than-infinite energy, and that always trumps finite.
We grasp each new physics possibility, naked black hole, wormhole, string
theory collapsed dimensions, stepped space warpage, and we still find the
slightly discredited Einstein blocking our way. Won't stop us dreaming, of
course.
As for moving planets, Dyson spheres and ringworlds, even built on smaller
scales, have one huge advantage: you can do them in far smaller steps.
There are always SO much better ways of terraforming than orbit movement.
Also, inspite of all the talk about doppleganger worlds, isn't there real
problems with two occupying the same orbit?
Whoops, showing my problems with orbital mechanics again. Keep trying, but
can't get my head around working out the problem I brought up earlier in my
campaign system.
The_Beast
Chris wrote on 07/28/2006 03:42:31 PM:
> >even in the Tuffleyverse large starships are transported across the
> On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 10:03:40AM -0500, Doug Evans wrote:
There's always Catherine Asaro's trick: just add an imaginary component
to velocity, and you can go _round_ lightspeed without having to go
_through_ it.
> There are always SO much better ways of terraforming than orbit
Two, yes; three or more, no. :-)
R
Mr. BW wrote on 07/29/2006 10:26:25 AM:
> There's always Catherine Asaro's trick: just add an
A variation on several much older themes; I'm still seeing the magic wand, and
failing to ignore the man behind the curtains...
YMhandwavium/psbMV
The_Beast