How would you go about exploring a Dyson sphere?
Has anyone ever GMd a session with one?
Has anyone ever GMd a session with one?
Dyson Spheres revisited
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
A space ship.
1) Grid it out into millions[*] of regions.
2) Select a region.
3) Spend your life exploring that region.
4) Get millions of other expeditions to explore the other regions.
[*] Acual number may be much higher -- I haven't done the math.
Hans
This individual has created a game (campaign) around the Star Trek NG show Relic 's Dyson sphere
http://www.coldnorth.com/owen/game/startrek/relic/relic.htm
The mission of the players is to explore it.
Dave Chase
http://www.coldnorth.com/owen/game/startrek/relic/relic.htm
The mission of the players is to explore it.
Dave Chase
Horatius314
SOC-4
The old Chaosium game Ringworld (And the novels it was based on) center on the concept of exploring a scaled down version of a dyson sphere. If you can find a copy of the game, it has some good insights. But, short form: Unless you'e got a lot of time on your hands (million years or so) exploring a dyson isn't really feasible without a fleet of ships and an army of scouts.
shadowdragon
SOC-12
A Dyson Sphere of 1AU radius is going to have a surface area of about 2.8122987E+23 square meters. That's 281,229,865,302,746,000,000,000 square meters. Giving you the generous ability to scan the equivalent of approximately 1/2 the surface area of earth a day, it will take about 3,019,045,970 years to scan the surface and a bit of the depth of the Dyson Sphere. You have fun with that. 
o:
What was that phrase......oh yeah...Space is BIG. REALLY REALLY BIG......You know the rest......
o:What was that phrase......oh yeah...Space is BIG. REALLY REALLY BIG......You know the rest......
More to the point, since Earth has approximately 5.1E+14 square meters in surface area, this means that the Dyson Sphere has roughly the same surface area of an interstellar empire with 550,000,000 habitable planets. That's 550 million planets.
I agree: You have fun with that.
Now, if it IS Earth-like it will be 70% water. So, only ~165 million worth of land area to cover.
Just out of curiosity
Taking for granted that this is a reasonnably sized attempt at terra forming with a mini-mini-nano-miniature TL ?? home made pocket sun:
Take the 20 sided (triangle) world map, instead of having their feet on the outside with heads pointing "outward" the people have their feet inside and head pointing inward
Please enlighten me as to why doing it that way? If I can create suns, why would I want to be economical about energy and crazed about total recovery? Hiding in the interstallar void may be?
Selandia
Taking for granted that this is a reasonnably sized attempt at terra forming with a mini-mini-nano-miniature TL ?? home made pocket sun:
Take the 20 sided (triangle) world map, instead of having their feet on the outside with heads pointing "outward" the people have their feet inside and head pointing inward
Please enlighten me as to why doing it that way? If I can create suns, why would I want to be economical about energy and crazed about total recovery? Hiding in the interstallar void may be?
Selandia
Well, I just thought it'd be really cool 
Yes, I thought of that.Now, if it IS Earth-like it will be 70% water. So, only ~165 million worth of land area to cover.
But what if there is also some aquatic aliens living in the water?Yes, I thought of that.
Have them fill out a census form?
Indeed, nobody did. I just hate to answer "are you nut, why bother?" and the way the discussion was evolving, with many post showing the practical impossibility of a Dyson sphere, the only way our friend could have his Dyson fun would be if the maker would provide a micro sun. Still, I would like to know the rationnal he will offer to his players.
Selandia
Dyson's premise wasn't even a solid shell. Early proponents, however, of the shell model suggested it as a post-red-dwarf solution to retaining a habitat in system.
Really, tho, it's going to be reliant upon either spin or Artificial Gravity to retain atmosphere; covering the polar areas probably means about 1/3 to 1/2 of the area isn't useful unless it's tapping some extradimensional power source. If spin, because those areas won't retain atmosphere, and if AG, well, you need to use collectors to convert the solar energy into AG.
Or have a handwavium layer that will naturally generate gravity.... but then, you're looking probably 2E6m thickness or more... and still have issues at the poles.
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Well, if you're just dismissing the engineering with a handwave, then why worry about the thickness for purposes of gravity. Just say the whole thing "works" because that's how it was built.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
Well, if you're just dismissing the engineering with a handwave, then why worry about the thickness for purposes of gravity. Just say the whole thing "works" because that's how it was built.
Built using Clarke's Laws (all 3).
:rofl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
The discussion of the 3rd Law is particularly pertinent here.
Likewise with Clarke's paraphrase of Gibson's Law.
Well, if you're just dismissing the engineering with a handwave, then why worry about the thickness for purposes of gravity. Just say the whole thing "works" because that's how it was built.
Because the handwavium portion is related to structural strength, rather than the mass needed for gravity... past a certain density, it ceases to be "matter as we know it" and gets into funky stuff which aggreates more normal matter into being funky stuff; collapsium, neutronium, black hole)... and an earthlike gravity still requires thousands of km to generate a gravity holding a suitably dense atmosphere....
JustinInOz
SOC-12
Clarification of Terms
The original post implies that a Dyson sphere is a place to be explored. I think that this is conflating Dyson Spheres with Larry Niven's Ringworld.
As Aramis has mentioned the orignal purpose of a Dyson Sphere was the capture of energy output of a star to put it to use for the technological use by a planet. It's purpose was not to create an immense surface to live on.
The central problem of the create a surface aim is the amount of material present in a stellar system to construct the sphere. Here goes
To create a Dyson sphere just outside the orbit of the Earth (153,098,232,000 metres) and make it 1 metre thick of material as dense as uranium would require the mass of 5.6*10^27 kg of material. Jupiter has most of the non solar mass in the system. It weighs 1.9*10^27 kg. So it falls short by just under 3 fold. Assuming you have a "super Jovian" in the system and you can avail yourself of its great mass. You would still have to convert the whole of the gas giant into what-ever the super material was that you are making this out of. Maybe you could "scoop" mass directly out of the star. I don't know we are entering into a level of tech beyond any I can get my head around.
To generate 1g at the equator of the inner sphere you would have to spin the whole thing one rotation every 9.1 days. I have not included the attraction of the mass of the shell because I am pretty sure it's effects would be negligble. The near bits which pull you "down" would be countered by the large amount of far bits which pull you "up". That is a pretty fast spin. Imagine if the earth moved so fast that we had a year pass every 10 days? The people would experience 2gs at noon and would have to tie themselves down to stop from drifting into space at midnight. I am not even looking into the energy costs associated with using artificial gravity.
This is just to get a place that is a uniform 1 metre thick. No mountains, no valleys. There would be 1 g at the equator .5 g at 2/3 the way up the sides. I have not even thought about atmosphere. You would want something to protect you from the stellar radiation.
I think we would be pretty quickly invoking Godwin's Law of COTI.
A dyson sphere who's purpose was to harvest the energy output of the star would be a bit different. It would not have to be thick at all. The "solar panel thingies" could be orbiting rather than being a connected rigid body. It would still require an increditble amount of material. It would gobble up the mass of Mars in the effort. Who would miss it? Still pretty incredible.
I am putting these numbers out so that people can kick them around and get some perspective on what is being suggested. It is one of the things I have always loved about Traveller - it invites exercises in mathematics and science.
The original post implies that a Dyson sphere is a place to be explored. I think that this is conflating Dyson Spheres with Larry Niven's Ringworld.
As Aramis has mentioned the orignal purpose of a Dyson Sphere was the capture of energy output of a star to put it to use for the technological use by a planet. It's purpose was not to create an immense surface to live on.
The central problem of the create a surface aim is the amount of material present in a stellar system to construct the sphere. Here goes
To create a Dyson sphere just outside the orbit of the Earth (153,098,232,000 metres) and make it 1 metre thick of material as dense as uranium would require the mass of 5.6*10^27 kg of material. Jupiter has most of the non solar mass in the system. It weighs 1.9*10^27 kg. So it falls short by just under 3 fold. Assuming you have a "super Jovian" in the system and you can avail yourself of its great mass. You would still have to convert the whole of the gas giant into what-ever the super material was that you are making this out of. Maybe you could "scoop" mass directly out of the star. I don't know we are entering into a level of tech beyond any I can get my head around.
To generate 1g at the equator of the inner sphere you would have to spin the whole thing one rotation every 9.1 days. I have not included the attraction of the mass of the shell because I am pretty sure it's effects would be negligble. The near bits which pull you "down" would be countered by the large amount of far bits which pull you "up". That is a pretty fast spin. Imagine if the earth moved so fast that we had a year pass every 10 days? The people would experience 2gs at noon and would have to tie themselves down to stop from drifting into space at midnight. I am not even looking into the energy costs associated with using artificial gravity.
This is just to get a place that is a uniform 1 metre thick. No mountains, no valleys. There would be 1 g at the equator .5 g at 2/3 the way up the sides. I have not even thought about atmosphere. You would want something to protect you from the stellar radiation.
I think we would be pretty quickly invoking Godwin's Law of COTI.
A dyson sphere who's purpose was to harvest the energy output of the star would be a bit different. It would not have to be thick at all. The "solar panel thingies" could be orbiting rather than being a connected rigid body. It would still require an increditble amount of material. It would gobble up the mass of Mars in the effort. Who would miss it? Still pretty incredible.
I am putting these numbers out so that people can kick them around and get some perspective on what is being suggested. It is one of the things I have always loved about Traveller - it invites exercises in mathematics and science.
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