Ross A. Finlayson writes:
> In the science fiction books that I have seen, there are items about big
> things in space. Niven wrote about a Ringworld, there is Dyson Sphere
> which is shell around the sun, etc. What I am wondering about are
Obviously, you can't make it solid. It has to be a cloud of objects in
actively controlled orbits.
> constructs around a planetary solar satellite. For example, if a 3 inch
> reflective layer around Mercury was made from solar cells, it could
> generate lots of power. Or, if a shell was built around the entire
As an aside, I recently ran into the solar satellite fleet power
people again. The new model includes large-aperture solid state phased
array microwave radiating antenna (principle similiar to SAR) directly
integrated into the thin solar cells. It is LEO-based, and tracks
receiving rectenna arrays on the ground. From a critical satellite
density onward, you have a total coverage, one satellite taking over
when one moves out of the direct line of vision. One doesn't need that
much hardware in the skies, surprisingly, and of course this can
greatly profit from linear mass driver launched solar sats fashioned
from lunar material.
> planet of Neptune, there could be an environment on the planet's
> surface.
No way, dude. Because Arkuat's going to eat it.
> Megascale engineering could give a planet its complete atmosphere and
> home sun radiation exposures and gravitational effects regardless of
> whether the sun still existed if it had novaed. So, it would be a
> projected sun in the sky, and the surrounding stars at night, with
> regular gravity.
Megascale engineering gives you means to dismantle the planets, and
intercept the entire solar output.
> If the Earth is 25,000 miles in circumference, it would have to be
> bigger than that. Refer to Anders Sandberg's web pages for megascale
> engineering.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:31 MDT