Space elevators and Dyson Spheres
- Thread starter Jon Jaymes
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By the way, Dyson himself discounted the concept of a solid shell. From Wikipedia:
BTW, just had this discussion with my son last week. Here's a nice, albeit long, video that's related:
[video=youtube;94iDdHRa2X4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94iDdHRa2X4[/video]
BTW, just had this discussion with my son last week. Here's a nice, albeit long, video that's related:
[video=youtube;94iDdHRa2X4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94iDdHRa2X4[/video]
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Community goal ends in 56E320 weeks, good luck commanders!
Do you know how much resources would be needed to make a Dyson Sphere or even a Ring. YOu would probly have to strip mine about 3-5 solar systems to make such a thing.
Now space elevates thats more doable.
I cant see a problem implementing dyson spheres from a mechanical perspective, since the thing is basically a mesh of solar panels. The close detail of it wouldn't even be visible unless you dropped out of supercruise. From a realism or lore perspective it's no problem either, dyson spheres would probably take centuries or longer to build, and would spend a very long time in an unfinished state. I don't see why anyone would need to explore a dyson sphere either, it's just an addition to a sun to make it look cool rather than a gameplay area.
Space elevator would also be cool, and look really cool but again I can't think how it would expand the actual gameplay, what the player could use it for. Anything added to the game should be fairly easy to implement using existing systems. Anything outside of that would fall into game expansion territory rather than "hey we tossed this cool feature into an update" type of thing.
But I like the idea of having more stuff in space. Things that expand the gameplay and make the universe seem more realistic. The universe is operating under cutthroat capitalism, but I can't see anyone trying that hard for my cash outside of a few holo-ads outside major stations. I'd like to see more stuff around the nav beacons. Lots of people in universe are simply travelling through systems, and it makes sense that opportunists would try and sell them something and steal business from the larger stations which take a while to get to. Tiny relay stations of different kinds, kind of like space gas stations or 7-11s. Offering limited services you can get from the larger stations, like for communication, delivery, fuel. Somewhere you could drop off deliveries, bounties, check galnet news, refuel etc. These could also have a chance of spawning pirates in the anarchy systems
Not to make regular stations obsolete, these should be fairly rare, and only one of each type in a system. Just a kind of thing that you could come across occasionally that might save you a 5 minute supercruise if you get lucky and it's the type of station you need.
Space elevator would also be cool, and look really cool but again I can't think how it would expand the actual gameplay, what the player could use it for. Anything added to the game should be fairly easy to implement using existing systems. Anything outside of that would fall into game expansion territory rather than "hey we tossed this cool feature into an update" type of thing.
But I like the idea of having more stuff in space. Things that expand the gameplay and make the universe seem more realistic. The universe is operating under cutthroat capitalism, but I can't see anyone trying that hard for my cash outside of a few holo-ads outside major stations. I'd like to see more stuff around the nav beacons. Lots of people in universe are simply travelling through systems, and it makes sense that opportunists would try and sell them something and steal business from the larger stations which take a while to get to. Tiny relay stations of different kinds, kind of like space gas stations or 7-11s. Offering limited services you can get from the larger stations, like for communication, delivery, fuel. Somewhere you could drop off deliveries, bounties, check galnet news, refuel etc. These could also have a chance of spawning pirates in the anarchy systems
Not to make regular stations obsolete, these should be fairly rare, and only one of each type in a system. Just a kind of thing that you could come across occasionally that might save you a 5 minute supercruise if you get lucky and it's the type of station you need.
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I've always thought that the notion of a Dyson sphere was pretty absurd. The amount of material required to build anything of that size would be more than the total of all the material in the rest of the solar system. Much more if you only count whatever material would be useful for building such a thing.
I've always figured it ridiculous that even an advanced civilization would need to harness the total potential energy of a star.
I've always figured it ridiculous that even an advanced civilization would need to harness the total potential energy of a star.
The orbital mechanics of keeping a structure stable and cohesive would be INSANE. Nevermind getting the thing to be physically robust and properly calibrated to avoid collisions with known orbit crossing bodies (like comets, meteors, and high energy dust particles). If they could manage to clear out the orbit to make it safe, that task alone would include some mind boggling technology.
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Depends on what you are trying to do I guess. The energy needs of an advanced civilization aren't exactly knowable. Particularly if they have discovered physics that we can't even comprehend yet. It's possible that stars aren't even the most powerful sources of energy. If inflationary theory (eg the Big Bang) is any indicator, then there could be far more energy hidden in the vacuum.
You couldn't use your local star, though, could you? It would completely knacker the planet you lived on.
Well when I said mechanical I meant game mechanics. Somebody mentioned that it would be impossible to implement visually. Pish. But I don't know about mind boggling technology to make the thing work. All you need is some solar panels, some duct tape and some thrusters.
But jokes aside, whether the humans in Elite are advanced enough to make, or begin making such a thing comes down to applying a generous dose of sci-fi and tuning out Michio Kaku while he sits on your shoulder and makes loud skeptical noises.
It's hinted that in the future, FD is going to expand on the alien artifacts found all over the place. How much this changes the game remains to be seen, but if the lure of a Thargoid technology season proves irresistible, we could be seeing all kinds of things. Like mass relays for very long distance travel, Dyson spheres, different, more alien looking type ships.
Personally I hope we stay with a more real world game universe and the tech used in it, but that's just my own tastes, and there's no telling what the players will ask for and what the dev team will implement.
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My background is solidly in the sciences, so I am naturally always skeptical. But at the same time, I think of Sci Fi as a means to exert human (and "alien") imagination in ways that inspire us to stretch ourselves beyond the mundane limitations of our current knowledge. I do love gritty and harsh realities too, so I am torn between a Ridley Scott vision of the future in space and the more awe inspiring visuals of incomprehensible achievements of intelligent beings, all while respecting the nuts and bolts of the laws that we do think we understand. It's a tightrope walk.
I think that Frontier does a pretty darn good job on the whole of making it both accessible and believable. So I think they could handle dyson spheres etc. The development effort to realize such a project would be a monumental achievement as well. Something akin to planetary landings on inhabited worlds. So I won't hold my breath for a solar system sized space station any time soon.
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Unlikely to see such a massive engineering effort (At least from Humans, who knows what the Thargoids are up to?) as a Dyson sphere in the Elite universe. It is already assumed that energy is cheap and plentiful, the ships are probably using some form of hydrogen fusion to generate the massive power needed to warp space and mess with mass so there wouldn't be much need to capture the energy of a whole star, unless you were planning on jumping an entire planet or two through hyperspace or maybe attempt to hold some kind of wormhole open maybe.
Even with some kind of unimaginable project that big i think it might just be easier to build lots of smaller fusion plants than capture all the solar energy from a star?
Even with some kind of unimaginable project that big i think it might just be easier to build lots of smaller fusion plants than capture all the solar energy from a star?
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One of the interesting point mentioned in the video I posted earlier in the thread is that a civilization would build a Dyson Swarm (cheaper and more technologically reasonable instead of a sphere) if they can't travel faster than light. Given we have FTL travel in the game, it is just cheaper to relocate to another star system and settle, rather than build a large, resource intensive construct to harness one star's energy.
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This, along with the problem of extracting the energy, is the killer for me. As for extraction, we could just laser it out, and efficiency at the moment is pretty high (65%). Divergence can improve indefinitely as we get better at lenses, so that isn't an issue either. But if there's a Dyson sphere, or ring, or cluster, around a star, that's so much energy that doesn't get to the planets. There's no getting around this - we would destroy a solar system to get the energy. The fact is that if we can actually get fusion working (and we are basically there already - record is measured in minutes, which is a lifetime), there's just no reason to do it. Stars are already the most efficient power generators,if you discount the fact that the power is not harnessed. The real milestone is making one that's just big enough for us. Dyson spheres are a great sci fi idea, but there's no reason for anyone to actually build one. I'm aware of the current hubbub about a star with an intensity profile that cannot match a planet, and that which people are saying might be due to something like a Dyson sphere, but seriously - you could do it around one half of a star, or even a full ring perpendicular to the solar system axis (so that it didn't affect the planets much), but there are just better, less wasteful ways to get energy.
Despite what we saw on the one featured in "Star Trek", Dyson Spheres aren't for living inside, they're purely for energy collection. You can't terraform or even stand up on the inside surface of a Dyson Sphere, no matter how thick and heavy you make the walls: the inverse-square nature of gravity means that the mass of the walls beneath your feet is exactly counterbalanced by the mass of the walls above your head. Every point inside a Dyson Sphere is gravitationally neutral; every object placed inside the Sphere would have to either orbit around the central star... or fall into it. This gravitational counteraction also means that you'd need to be constantly re-centring the star inside the Sphere by physically moving either the star or the Sphere itself, since gravity alone can't do it; as far as the star can tell gravitationally, the Sphere isn't even there.
You could spin the Sphere, of course, but then you'd end up with a vast, thick "ocean" of air and water at the "equator", and vast barren airless deserts at the "poles", with only two relatively thin strips of "coastline" on the two shores of the central ocean where you could actually live. This is why Niven's "Ringworld" concept made much more sense, in terms of creating a vast circumstellar surface area which people could actually live on.
If Dyson Spheres actually existed in-game, you couldn't actually "see" them - if they're true Spheres, they're blocking and absorbing all light from their star. They'd presumably have a super-high infrared (waste heat) signature, but zero visible light emitted; perhaps they're disguised as brown dwarfs. Finally, if we did actually find one and fly "to" one, we'd probably get stuck inside it. Our FSD will happily fly straight through solid objects when arriving at a star, so would presumably happily jump right through the Sphere wall and appear next to the star, just like normal. BUT, how would we leave again? The FSD refuses to activate if another object (like a planet) blocks the line of sight to the destination star. We'd have to supercruise out to the wall and try to find a hole or airlock of some kind to fly through, in order to escape.
You could spin the Sphere, of course, but then you'd end up with a vast, thick "ocean" of air and water at the "equator", and vast barren airless deserts at the "poles", with only two relatively thin strips of "coastline" on the two shores of the central ocean where you could actually live. This is why Niven's "Ringworld" concept made much more sense, in terms of creating a vast circumstellar surface area which people could actually live on.
If Dyson Spheres actually existed in-game, you couldn't actually "see" them - if they're true Spheres, they're blocking and absorbing all light from their star. They'd presumably have a super-high infrared (waste heat) signature, but zero visible light emitted; perhaps they're disguised as brown dwarfs. Finally, if we did actually find one and fly "to" one, we'd probably get stuck inside it. Our FSD will happily fly straight through solid objects when arriving at a star, so would presumably happily jump right through the Sphere wall and appear next to the star, just like normal. BUT, how would we leave again? The FSD refuses to activate if another object (like a planet) blocks the line of sight to the destination star. We'd have to supercruise out to the wall and try to find a hole or airlock of some kind to fly through, in order to escape.
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I have read quite a few novels with these types of construct in them, but I can not ever remember anyone tackling the radiation/ solar wind issue. Without the Earth's magnetic field it's atmosphere would have been stripped away by the solar wind and all or the free water would have sublimed away leaving only frozen aquifers and it would be like Mars. A dyson sphere would also have no means of protecting it's surface from the radiation streaming from its host star.
Space Elevators
This has been discussed before, a long time ago. We didn't have planetary landings or CQC then, though.
Now, with CQC, FD introduced some remarkable maps, including the appropriately called "Elevate" map, containing the upper end of such a "Space Elevator" (first image). Horizons come, we get stations and outposts on planetary surfaces, too. Now, wouldn't it be cool if there'd actually be a planetary station at the lower end of that Elevator, so the surface structure and the orbit structure are actually connected by an elevator? So that, if we want, we could fly down the elevator all the to the planetary surface. In the future, when EVA is added, we could even use it to travel between planet surface and orbit. Could be an absolutely marvelous view and experience to ride such a thing - given it has windows!
If it's to much of a hassle to actually develop, I think it shouldn't have high priority, but if FD would manage to pull this of without to much trouble, it would be a very cool and immersive feature to have such a "multi-stage" structure around some planets.
This has been discussed before, a long time ago. We didn't have planetary landings or CQC then, though.
Now, with CQC, FD introduced some remarkable maps, including the appropriately called "Elevate" map, containing the upper end of such a "Space Elevator" (first image). Horizons come, we get stations and outposts on planetary surfaces, too. Now, wouldn't it be cool if there'd actually be a planetary station at the lower end of that Elevator, so the surface structure and the orbit structure are actually connected by an elevator? So that, if we want, we could fly down the elevator all the to the planetary surface. In the future, when EVA is added, we could even use it to travel between planet surface and orbit. Could be an absolutely marvelous view and experience to ride such a thing - given it has windows!
If it's to much of a hassle to actually develop, I think it shouldn't have high priority, but if FD would manage to pull this of without to much trouble, it would be a very cool and immersive feature to have such a "multi-stage" structure around some planets.