The ‘disassembly’ of Mercury and Venus for materials to create a Dyson Swarm to be stationed around the sun are is we need to do to access limitless solar power. Intrigued? Disturbed? So were we.
According to Wikipedia, a Dyson Sphere is the concept of huge structure or network of orbiting solar collector satellites that can capture much of the energy output of a star, such as the sun, which could then be transmitted to Earth via various forms of wireless energy transfer.
Other variations such as a Dyson Ring, Dyson Swarm or Dyson Shell are usually lumped under the Dyson Sphere label.
So how would you build such a structure? It’s a long way to drag a bunch of solar panel encrusted satellites.
Stuart Armstong provides a possible answer – we will need to mine materials from Mercury and construct the satellites on-site, so to speak.
George Dvorsky, Chairman of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and program director for the Rights of Non-Human Persons program, takes this concept further.
“Actually, we’ll likely have to take the whole planet apart,” says Mr. Dvorsky. “.. we are going to have to disassemble not just Mercury, but Venus, some of the outer planets, and any nearby asteroids as well.”
Mr. Dvorsky believes such a project could commence in around 25 to 50 years, with completion of the first phase requiring only a few decades.
“And given the progressively worsening condition of Earth and our ever-growing demand for living space and resources, we may have no other choice.”
As everyone knows, Venus can be a terribly irritating planet. It’s the source of many UFO reports; so perhaps we’re better off without it. As for Mercury, ask the average person to point it out in the night sky and they will probably be unable to. It likely won’t be missed by most.
However, fret not dear stargazers – for this grand project may not ever eventuate.
In a rebuttal article on Forbes entitled “Destroying Mercury To Build A Dyson Sphere Is A Bad Idea” are a number of reasons why this project may be impossible to execute. Among them, it seems dismantling Mercury would take an amount of energy 100 billion times the US annual energy consumption.
Image credit: Vedexent
