Every argument I’ve seen against the cool science fiction future boils down to “we couldn’t do it this financial quarter, so it’ll never be possible at all”.
It’s not that. It’s that organized civilization won’t last long enough to get that advanced. How long do you think it’ll take to get that far scientifically? 3-4 centuries? We’re lucky if we get 2-3 decades left out of civilization between running out of resources, climate change, pfas, microplastics, fascism/war, and unbridled capitalism. That’s just shit that’s happening right now, not even including unexpected shit like super volcano eruptions or major meteor strike or something. We simply don’t have enough time to get that advanced.
Actually, it might be worth doing this first. Once you’ve got even a partial Dyson swarm you’ve got ample energy to make interstellar travel a lot easier. You could either use beamed propulsion (lightsails or magsails), or manufacture bulk antimatter to fuel high-efficiency rocketry, or a combination of the two.
But you can’t do this to earth’s sun without causing catastrophic changes on earth, so you have to reach a different star before doing this. Blocking out even like 1% of the sun’s energy from reaching earth would likely wreak havoc on the earth
Exactly, this won’t be worth looking into before we have interstellar travel, and that is probably a very very long time away
Lol even in theory it’s dubious, in reality it’s absurd. Well never make it to that point.
Every argument I’ve seen against the cool science fiction future boils down to “we couldn’t do it this financial quarter, so it’ll never be possible at all”.
It’s not that. It’s that organized civilization won’t last long enough to get that advanced. How long do you think it’ll take to get that far scientifically? 3-4 centuries? We’re lucky if we get 2-3 decades left out of civilization between running out of resources, climate change, pfas, microplastics, fascism/war, and unbridled capitalism. That’s just shit that’s happening right now, not even including unexpected shit like super volcano eruptions or major meteor strike or something. We simply don’t have enough time to get that advanced.
Very pessimistic viewpoint. We have issues to solve for sure but I very much doubt humanity will implode in less than 50 years.
We’re entering a new dark age
Guess we’ll see.
Humanity won’t, but civilization will.
RemindMe! 50 years
Actually, it might be worth doing this first. Once you’ve got even a partial Dyson swarm you’ve got ample energy to make interstellar travel a lot easier. You could either use beamed propulsion (lightsails or magsails), or manufacture bulk antimatter to fuel high-efficiency rocketry, or a combination of the two.
But you can’t do this to earth’s sun without causing catastrophic changes on earth, so you have to reach a different star before doing this. Blocking out even like 1% of the sun’s energy from reaching earth would likely wreak havoc on the earth
Put the Dyson swarm at the orbit of the asteroid belt. Won’t block much in the way of light, but comets could become an issue.
Well, given that the earth only utilizes about 1 billionth of the sun’s energy, so I think we could have both with just a little effort.
We’ll just keep a window open on that side of the Dyson sphere.