zlacker

>>g-mork+(OP)
> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power

We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.

edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun's power. A few trillionths per year.

>>gok+h4
See Dyson Sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

>>jupp0r+To
Yeah, that's the point ... it's stupid to believe humanity is capable of deploying that much infrastructure. We cannot do even 0.01% of it.

>>morale+xq
What do you think the limiting factor is? I don't see why we can't scale manufacturing of satellites up as far as we want. If we mine out a substantial fraction of the mass of the earth, we can go harvest asteroids or something.

>>tlb+fu
There are only so many people who can make satellites; there are only so many things to make satellites out of; and there are only so many orbits to put them in. There are only so many reasons why a person might want a satellite. There are only so many ways of placing satellites in orbit and each requires some amount of energy, and we have access to a finite amount of energy over time.

Finally, if we limited ourselves to earth-based raw materials, we would eventually reach a point where the remaining mass of the earth would have less gravitational effect on the satellite fleet than the fleet itself, which would have deleterious effects on the satellite fleet.

Seven reasons are intuitive; I’m sure there are many others.

>>single+qw
> Finally, if we limited ourselves to earth-based raw materials, we would eventually reach a point where the remaining mass of the earth would have less gravitational effect on the satellite fleet than the fleet itself, which would have deleterious effects on the satellite fleet.

The Earth's crust has an average thickness of about 15-20 km. Practically we can only get at maybe the top 1-2 km, as drill bits start to fail the deeper you go.

The Earth's radius is 6,371 km.

So even if we could somehow dug up entire crust we can get to and flung it into orbit, that would barely be noticeable to anything in orbit.

>>SJC_Ha+xG
Once you dig up the top kilometer of a planet's crust, what's under your feet? The next kilometer!

That would suck to do to Earth, but we can launch all of Mars's mass into the swarm.