4 科技：Dyson sphere (2)

So, what would it look like? A solid shell enveloping the Sun is probably not the way to go to and a large rigid body like that would be vulnerable to impacts, possibly shattering it would be liable to drift and could crash straight into the Sun. A more viable design for a Dyson Sphere might be a Dyson swarm an enormous set of orbiting panels that collect the sun’s power and beam it elsewhere. Such as sward would give humanity basically unlimited energy.

But building it won’t be easy. Solid shell enveloping the Sun is probably not the way to go. A large rigid body that would be vulnerable to impacts possibly shattering. It would be liable to drift and could crash straight into the Sun. A more viable design for a Dyson Sphere might be a Dyson Swarm, an enormous set of orbing panels that collect the Sun’s power and beam it elsewhere. Such as sward would give humanity basically unlimited energy, but building it won’t be easy.

The Sun is very big so we need a lot of satellites. If each satellite is a square kilometer, we’d need around 30 quadrillion to surround the Sun. Even if they’re built as lightly as possible, we need about 100 quintillion tons of material. And then, we need the energy to actually put the parts together and deliver them to their positions around the Sun. On top of all that, we need to have a permanent infrastructure set up in space to start building.

We can sort the challenges into three main categories, materials, design, and energy.

To get the vast amounts of raw materials required for our Dyson swarm, will have to largely disassemble a whole planet. Of the planets available, mercury is the best candidate because it’s the closest to the Sun and very metal-rich. Close to the Sun also means less moving stuff around. And mercury has no atmosphere and only about a third of the surface gravity of Earth, making it comparatively easy to launch material into space.