The ‘megascale’ structures that humans could one day build
What are the biggest, boldest things that humanity could engineer? From planet lifters to space cannons, Anders Sandberg explores some of history’s most ambitious visions – and why they’re not as ‘impossible’ as they seem.
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ake the example mentioned earlier of building a Dyson sphere. It seems far off, but in a sense, we have started to englobe the Sun with solar collectors already by placing satellites in orbit around it. If we continue for a few million years there could be a Dyson sphere in place.
I wonder how feasible solar collecting cloth or similar material the thickness of a piece of paper or slightly more is.
Similar to a solar sail in size but instead of propelling a spacecraft it collects energy
I have this idea of using metal in the asteroid bets to build an artificial planet which can be moved further back into the solar system as the sun becomes a red giant, after a while, the sun will shrink to become a white dwarf so it can be moved colder into the solar system again.
Tau.Neutrino said:
I have this idea of using metal in the asteroid bets to build an artificial planet which can be moved further back into the solar system as the sun becomes a red giant, after a while, the sun will shrink to become a white dwarf so it can be moved colder into the solar system again.
Which might have to hide behind a moon somewhere further back a bit during that planetary nebula bit.
Tau.Neutrino said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
I have this idea of using metal in the asteroid bets to build an artificial planet which can be moved further back into the solar system as the sun becomes a red giant, after a while, the sun will shrink to become a white dwarf so it can be moved colder into the solar system again.
Which might have to hide behind a moon somewhere further back a bit during that planetary nebula bit.
Got eternal life figured out then?
Tau.Neutrino said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
I have this idea of using metal in the asteroid bets to build an artificial planet which can be moved further back into the solar system as the sun becomes a red giant, after a while, the sun will shrink to become a white dwarf so it can be moved colder into the solar system again.
Which might have to hide behind a moon somewhere further back a bit during that planetary nebula bit.
In a billion years the andromeda galaxy hits the milky way.
The first problem to be solved is stopping the galaxy hitting THEN worrying about the sun ( hint – you’d just swap out the sun with another similar star in a split second so nothing changes).
wookiemeister said:
In a billion years the andromeda galaxy hits the milky way.The first problem to be solved is stopping the galaxy hitting THEN worrying about the sun ( hint – you’d just swap out the sun with another similar star in a split second so nothing changes).
LOL. Luckily, when two galaxies pass through each other, most of what happens is that it heats up the interstellar gas in both galaxies.
eg. a bright star passing between us and Proxima wouldn’t have much effect on the Solar System out to the Kuyper Belt.
Tau.Neutrino said:
The ‘megascale’ structures that humans could one day buildWhat are the biggest, boldest things that humanity could engineer? From planet lifters to space cannons, Anders Sandberg explores some of history’s most ambitious visions – and why they’re not as ‘impossible’ as they seem.
more….
I looked into Jules Verne canon, making appropriate modifications to make it better. The biggest problem is air resistance at high speed. It’s more suited to unmanned than manned space flight because unmanned objects can take higher acceleration. Heinlein is right in saying that it would work well on the Moon.
This is one I haven’t looked into. I’ve looked into the Gibraltar Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Dam and both seem feasible. In this case, using nuclear-powered excavation would speed the work up.
> Electricity grids, the internet, and interstate highways are enormous in scale, yet we take them for granted
What amazes me is that a megascale project to link every coastal country on Earth using undersea fibre optic cables has been completed, despite the wildly differing political organisation and poverty of these countries.
> If we consider megascale engineering that has actually happened – the terracing of parts of South East Asia, the land reclamation of the Netherlands, the US Interstate Highway System, the internet
That article should also have mentioned China’s Great Green Wall. 4,800 km long and hundreds of km thick of tree planting. By the year 2009, the whole of China’s tree coverage had increased by 50% over what it was at the start of the project in 1978. Northern China’s tree coverage has increased by 200%. And despite 42 years of continued progress, the project still has another 30 plus years of tree planting still to come.
> Take the example mentioned earlier of building a Dyson sphere. It seems far off.
Yeah.
mollwollfumble said:
That article should also have mentioned China’s Great Green Wall. 4,800 km long and hundreds of km thick of tree planting. By the year 2009, the whole of China’s tree coverage had increased by 50% over what it was at the start of the project in 1978. Northern China’s tree coverage has increased by 200%. And despite 42 years of continued progress, the project still has another 30 plus years of tree planting still to come.
There is a program underway in Africa to do the same thing to stop the expansion of the Sahara desert into the Sahel region.
