FYI Calling all space nerds: Lets build a Dyson sphere

fly said:
I'm pretty sure that we have a satellite orbiting Mercury right now. If not, then there is one on the way. So we already have a reliable way to get there. And I sincerely doubt that we'd have humans do it, as you suggest, it would create a ton of unnecessary overhead.

Solar powered robots would work pretty well I'd think.
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Except they would melt within 30 minutes of landing on mercury.
 
Huh, upon further reading (lol wikipedia) it seems the problem with getting to mercury isnt the heat, but rather the gravitational pull of the sun itself,

WikiPedia said:
Another reason why so few missions have targeted Mercury is that it is very difficult to obtain a satellite orbit around the planet on account of its proximity to the Sun, which causes the Sun’s gravitational field to pull on any satellite that would be set into Mercury's orbit. Furthermore, spacecraft naturally accelerate as they approach the greater gravitational pull of the Sun, but must slow down in order to orbit Mercury, so this entails considerable fuel requirements. This is different with planets beyond Earth’s orbit where the satellite works against the pull of the Sun. Mercury's lack of an atmosphere poses further challenges because a probe attempting to land on Mercury would not be able to aerobrake or use a parachute type device.[SUP][3][/SUP] Thus it requires a great amount of energy to reach and observe the planet.
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Duke said:
Satellites indicate orbits. Satellites are not landers..

We haven't landed anything on Mercury. To do so means it would have to be able to function, and survive in an average 460 degree celcius heat.
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You can't be suggesting that Mercury is somehow hotter than everything around it, are you? And its not necessarily the heating that would be the problem, its the heat-cool cycle. Although, I'm pretty sure we have the technology to engineer something that could. Now.
 
fly said:
You can't be suggesting that Mercury is somehow hotter than everything around it, are you? And its not necessarily the heating that would be the problem, its the heat-cool cycle. Although, I'm pretty sure we have the technology to engineer something that could. Now.
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Yeah I dont think withstanding the temperature variations of the surface would be a huge problem.
The landing and taking off again will be the problem.
 
fly said:
I'm talking about a true Dyson sphere...
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I read a little more about this, and the sphere is really problematic, as opposed to the spherical array format.
One problem is the amount of material that would be required to make the structure large enough to enclose around earth orbit. One article I read even doubts the existence of enough material within our own solar system.
The other problem is maintaining the structures relative position. It wont have enough mass to be held in place by the suns gravity field, so it could drift. Placement of a series of some sort of propulsion engines could possibly solve that.
The engines could also be placed so that they not only keep the sphere in place, but if they rotate it along an axis, it could generate gravitational effect, and allow the inside surface of the sphere to be habitable.
Neato.
 
The Amazing Drool Boy said:
I read a little more about this, and the sphere is really problematic, as opposed to the spherical array format.
One problem is the amount of material that would be required to make the structure large enough to enclose around earth orbit. One article I read even doubts the existence of enough material within our own solar system.
The other problem is maintaining the structures relative position. It wont have enough mass to be held in place by the suns gravity field, so it could drift. Placement of a series of some sort of propulsion engines could possibly solve that.
The engines could also be placed so that they not only keep the sphere in place, but if they rotate it along an axis, it could generate gravitational effect, and allow the inside surface of the sphere to be habitable.
Neato.
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An array would be even harder to keep in place since you'd need to monitor the relative positions of thousands and thousands of objects. They can't orbit the star either since most of them wouldn't travel along an axis of the star.
 
itburnswhenipee said:
An array would be even harder to keep in place since you'd need to monitor the relative positions of thousands and thousands of objects. They can't orbit the star either since most of them wouldn't travel along an axis of the star.
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We monitor thousands of pieces of space junk in earth orbit now, from dead satellites to debris down to the size of a basket ball, so keeping track of them shouldnt be too far out of reach.
Maintaining their relative position is something that would have to be worked on tho:p
 
The Amazing Drool Boy said:
I read a little more about this, and the sphere is really problematic, as opposed to the spherical array format.
One problem is the amount of material that would be required to make the structure large enough to enclose around earth orbit. One article I read even doubts the existence of enough material within our own solar system.
The other problem is maintaining the structures relative position. It wont have enough mass to be held in place by the suns gravity field, so it could drift. Placement of a series of some sort of propulsion engines could possibly solve that.
The engines could also be placed so that they not only keep the sphere in place, but if they rotate it along an axis, it could generate gravitational effect, and allow the inside surface of the sphere to be habitable.
Neato.
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What a ridiculous proposition. Who's going to pay to encase the solar system in metal? lol

We can't maintain our own infrastructure or engineer electronics that don't break after 18 months. Hell we can barely explore the Marianas Trench. But sure, let's try this. After that maybe we can shoot monkeys from our asses. :lol:
 
Sarcasmo said:
What a ridiculous proposition. Who's going to pay to encase the solar system in metal? lol

We can't maintain our own infrastructure or engineer electronics that don't break after 18 months. Hell we can barely explore the Marianas Trench. But sure, let's try this. After that maybe we can shoot monkeys from our asses. :lol:
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Hey, man, they had one in a star trek episode.
The monkey butt thing, that is, not sure about a dyson sphere.
 
There aren't enough resources to build this thing, and there isn't enough money in the entire global economy to pay for it. Assuming, of course, that we aren't grotesquely overestimating our ability to do shit well enough in the first place.
 
Sarcasmo said:
There aren't enough resources to build this thing, and there isn't enough money in the entire global economy to pay for it. Assuming, of course, that we aren't grotesquely overestimating our ability to do sh*t well enough in the first place.
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Thats what I said in my previous post, not enough material in our solar system to fabricate the sphere format.
The satellite array would be far more practical, even if its just a ring array.
Of course, all this discussion assumes humanity is united enough in its motivations to make such a thing.
 
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