Space elevators and Dyson Spheres

Jon Jaymes

Jon Jaymes
At a future update, will we be able to see extremely developed systems presumably in places like Sol or Achenar building and finally using a fixed space elevator from a planet's surface up into space, as proposed in some of Arthur C Clarke's novels (based on others' theories)?

Really cool would be the discovery of an abandoned Dyson Sphere built by some long-forgotten civilisation. If feasible, humans would quickly colonise and start using such a marvellous peice of technology.

Cheers,
Jon Jaymes
 

JKF

JKF
A Dyson Sphere could be a standalone game. Just do the math based on it having a radius the same as Earth's distance from the sun.

There'd could be more land area than we could ever explore in a lifetime.
 

Jon Jaymes

Jon Jaymes
Ah, but a colder star and it could be a Mercury type orbit! One would assume a humanoid type species would build mainly farmland and pleasure areas, so would be fairly flat. If the species was sentient glaciers, that would be another matter :)

Jon Jaymes
 

JKF

JKF
Jon Jaymes said:
Ah, but a colder star and it could be a Mercury type orbit! One would assume a humanoid type species would build mainly farmland and pleasure areas, so would be fairly flat. If the species was sentient glaciers, that would be another matter :)

Jon Jaymes
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Even with a Mercury orbit you're looking at over 16,000,000,000 square miles.

More likely I reckon would be a ring rather than a sphere; much easier to build and still plenty more space than the planet it replaces.
 

Nagual

Nagual
I think Dyson Spheres were mentioned in one of the videos, I think it was in reference to a community question. Essentially DB said nope. But hey, who knows..? :)
 

Jon Jaymes

Jon Jaymes
The ring idea was part of 3001 (final Odyssey novel) which had 3 (I think) space elevators linking it directly to Earth's surface - hence the potential for space elevators say on Mars - so long as Phobos and Deimos(sp?) don't smash into them (ooops :D)

Jon Jaymes
 

JKF

JKF
Jon Jaymes said:
The ring idea was part of 3001 (final Odyssey novel) which had 3 (I think) space elevators linking it directly to Earth's surface - hence the potential for space elevators say on Mars - so long as Phobos and Deimos(sp?) don't smash into them (ooops :D)

Jon Jaymes
Click to expand...

I was thinking more along the lines of Ringworld by Larry Niven rather than a ring around a planet.

Space elevators should appear though since they do seem to be a likely development.
 

LCplCombat

L
JKF said:
Even with a Mercury orbit you're looking at over 16,000,000,000 square miles.

More likely I reckon would be a ring rather than a sphere; much easier to build and still plenty more space than the planet it replaces.
Click to expand...

Can you imagine the resources required to build a Dyson Sphere even at that size?
 

popuptoaster

P
There are issues with Dyson spheres and the stresses they would be subject to and things like keeping an atmosphere in place at the poles where there is no gravity without filling the whole thing and causing massive pressures at ground level at the equator, a ring is much more plausible and even more plausible if it was a thin ring with "living plates" on there at intervals rather than a continuous land area all the way round like a ringworld.
 

JKF

JKF
LCplCombat said:
Can you imagine the resources required to build a Dyson Sphere even at that size?
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Well the Earth is about 260,000,000,000 cubic miles so you could build a sphere at the Mercury orbit and leave plenty of spare material.

If the whole of the volume of Earth was useable material you could build a sphere with a shell of over 16 miles thickness.

Probably best to build a ring first so there's somewhere for everyone to live before Earth gets used up, then complete the sphere.
 

Bearhug67

B
A Dyson’s sphere is more of a theoretical thought construct then anything else as building one would create a bunch of problems which would make it actually quite unpractical even if you would ignore resources and material qualities required.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

The idea is to be able to capture all or at least most of the energy output of the star in the center. I think the idea for the sphere was made in a time as a star was mainly as a source of light and not creating huge amounts of particle streams and radiation on the whole spectrum being flooded into the surrounding space which would make such a sphere practical quite useless until you find a way to convert the majority of the stars wide energy spectrum into useful energy and deal with the pressure the material streams would create.

Gravity could also just exist when the sphere would rotate which would then just create a ring with normal gravity where the rest of the sphere would be just used to catch and convert the energy and deal with the pressure problem, which would make the Dyson ring a more realistic idea then a whole sphere, like many know from the ring worlds from Halo or in a much smaller scale from the space station Elysium where the ring station keeps its air mainly through centrifugal forces inside, probably supported also by some electromagnetic shields, less against air loss but more against radiation from space as the pretty thin oxygen layer would not work well enough like our much thicker air around Earth. That shield would help against radiation but would let objects pass like the shuttles.

In ED a Elysium like station would be technical possible and I hope more for seeing more of seeing such ring or O’Neill style stations then super exotic objects like a Dyson’s sphere or ring with their bigger then life size.
 

Jon Jaymes

Jon Jaymes
Actually, that last post brought to mind that Elysium is effectively a tiny version of a Culture Orbital from the late great Iain M Banks books. Though from memory virtually all orbitals are not in orbit of a habitable planet, and in some cases may just orbit the star and not say a gas giant.

I think he most detailed description is of Chiark in The Player of Games.

Jon Jaymes

PS The Culture is my idea of the perfect society :cool:
 

MarcusAurelius

MarcusAurelius
As much as I support sci fi ideas, I think Dyson spheres are just too massive to even factor into a game at all. You can have them as Dyson rings around planets, this would not upset the load balancing of habitats etc. but something the size of red supergiant with habitable interiors. I don't know if that would be pushing the limits to the game engine or if its even plausible given that Elite doesn't have some unlimited technology tree. It doesn't even have artificial gravity pegged.

So perhaps dyson spheres are like 1000 years away on the Elite tech tree, meaning its impossible to build them anyways.

Which leaves the question of who would have built at least one? The Thargoids? Some extinct race far out in the galaxy? It would be good to find little easter eggs like that, some ancient alien ruin, on a defunct dyson ring circling a small planet. I would totally love that discovery. But making a dyson sphere with current Elite tech considering the actual game lore and mans limits, sounds improbable.

I remember watching an episode on Star Trek TNG, about a defunct Dyson Sphere and how they found Scotty in one of derelict shuttles that had crashed on its surface. It was a wonderful moment in Star Trek. :D
 

tooterfish

T
Jon Jaymes said:
Actually, that last post brought to mind that Elysium is effectively a tiny version of a Culture Orbital from the late great Iain M Banks books.
Click to expand...
Not that Banks isn't great, but people have been conceptualising habitats like that for a long long time.

http://crnchy.com/art/psychedelic-futuristic-space-station-concepts-from-artists-of-the-70s/

Hell, if you look hard enough you could probably find concepts from even earlier.

You'd be surprised how forward thinking some people are, ideas usually far outpace technology. A lot of the HCI stuff we use today was dreamed up in the 40s and 50s for example.
 
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Darren Grey

Darren Grey
Nasher said:
I think it's already been prooven that a dyson sphere would actually impossible to make :p
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A traditional Dyson Sphere would be impossible, or at least impractical. But instead of having a solid shell around a whole star you could surround it with many thousands of separate satellites, each with a large surface area collecting energy, and with sufficient gaps between them to ensure no collisions. You could then laser the energy to wherever in the system it's required. Even getting 1% of a star's total energy output would be quite a lot.
 
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Astraeus

A
Something like this?
Gundam00s2e24ss-41.JPG
 
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