Technotranscendence wrote:
> On Monday, November 27, 2000 4:09 PM Ross A. Finlayson raf@tiki-lounge.com
> wrote:
> > 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
> > 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
> > planet of Neptune, there could be an environment on the planet's
> > surface.
>
> Small scale projects, such as flooding the East African Rift Valley, have
> been discussed here before. I'd like to focus on such "poor man's"
> macroengineering.
>
> Let me suggest a few more:
>
> 1. Manipulating undersea volcanoes to create new islands.
> 2. Manipulating ocean currents to control regional and global climate.
> 3. Removing mountains to control wind and rainfall patterns.
>
> Granted, these are not as glamorous as the larger scale ones mentioned in
> Niven (I think he got the idea for _Ringworld_ from Olaf Stapeldon's
> _Starmaker_; any Stapeldon fans out there?), but they are easier --
> financially and technologically to accomplish.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Daniel Ust
> http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
If the weather can be directed without capping volcanoes, or otherwise, there
are already large engineering projects, mostly about water management.
Can tethers have a complete orbit? For example, from an orbit could a
satellite have a cable that reached all the way around the planet back to
itself? That might be a first stage about putting a structure around the
entire planet. If a couple cables were in orbit, they could generate
deionizing fields around the planet outside of it's magnetosphere.
There are a lot of ways to speculate about how something on a different scale
could exist.
Ross
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson Finlayson Consulting Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/
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