Why are you sceptical of “anything that sounds like a Dyson sphere”? It’s not particularly unrealistic given modern technology (i.e. rockets and solar panels) - the only pain points are a) making use of the energy collected, b) getting the materials to make it, and c) getting the panels in place (which will require an upfront investment of energy). Regarding using the energy produced, it would be inefficient to try to transport the energy back to Earth (though if costs went down significantly, it could still be justified), but using solar satelites for either computation or a permanent off-earth colony would be justified- particularly with computation, this could allow us to redirect on-earth sources of energy to other uses of energy, or reduce overall Earthside consumption of energy. Regarding materials, there’s a lot of materials on Earth and in other places in the solar system- at worst we can mine asteroids, but I’m not sure that’d even be neccesary.
A Dyson sphere doesn’t need to be built all at once. Once it becomes feasible to launch solar computers into space, and make a profit selling computing time, the sector will naturally grow exponentially- now, it may or may not be bounded by some ceiling of demand, but even if only 1 / 100th or 1/ 1,000th of the sun’s output gets captured, that would represent a huge change in how things work
A Dyson sphere wouldn’t be much different from a big cloud of modern satellites, perhaps with bigger solar panels, but the materials would be the same.
You don’t need strong materials for a dyson sphere. You basically just put solar panels into low-orbit until you captured all of the outgoing light (or like any appreciable fraction of it, you just do it until you have the energy you need).
You might be confusing “Dyson sphere” with the Dyson shells from science fiction, which is more specific type of Dyson sphere. You don’t need “scrith” or “neutronium” to make a Dyson sphere out of satellites (a Dyson swarm) which is the more realistic type that Dyson originally proposed, or out of statites (a Dyson bubble).
Why are you sceptical of “anything that sounds like a Dyson sphere”? It’s not particularly unrealistic given modern technology (i.e. rockets and solar panels) - the only pain points are a) making use of the energy collected, b) getting the materials to make it, and c) getting the panels in place (which will require an upfront investment of energy). Regarding using the energy produced, it would be inefficient to try to transport the energy back to Earth (though if costs went down significantly, it could still be justified), but using solar satelites for either computation or a permanent off-earth colony would be justified- particularly with computation, this could allow us to redirect on-earth sources of energy to other uses of energy, or reduce overall Earthside consumption of energy. Regarding materials, there’s a lot of materials on Earth and in other places in the solar system- at worst we can mine asteroids, but I’m not sure that’d even be neccesary.
A Dyson sphere doesn’t need to be built all at once. Once it becomes feasible to launch solar computers into space, and make a profit selling computing time, the sector will naturally grow exponentially- now, it may or may not be bounded by some ceiling of demand, but even if only 1 / 100th or 1/ 1,000th of the sun’s output gets captured, that would represent a huge change in how things work
Do we know of materials that could make a good dyson sphere?
A Dyson sphere wouldn’t be much different from a big cloud of modern satellites, perhaps with bigger solar panels, but the materials would be the same.
You don’t need strong materials for a dyson sphere. You basically just put solar panels into low-orbit until you captured all of the outgoing light (or like any appreciable fraction of it, you just do it until you have the energy you need).
You might be confusing “Dyson sphere” with the Dyson shells from science fiction, which is more specific type of Dyson sphere. You don’t need “scrith” or “neutronium” to make a Dyson sphere out of satellites (a Dyson swarm) which is the more realistic type that Dyson originally proposed, or out of statites (a Dyson bubble).