After all, the earth is bathed in 5000 times the energy humans need. I wonder about the unmanageability of all that energy we'd collect if we lived in a big, hulking Dyson sphere. I wonder, for example, why humans would ever need millions of more times the real estate of planet earth. Thinking big is fun, but thinking little is often more prosperous. If a ringworld is possible, then what else? Can we move stars around? Can we create Cinderella planets? Consider the ringworld's theoretical upgrade, the Dyson sphere, a complete sphere around a star rather than a mere ring, a solution meant to make use of all the energy emitted by a star and a structure that would require planet harvesting on an order magnitudes more involved than building a ringworld. Ringworlding is engineering on a galactic scale. The boldness of the ringworld is that it unlocks so many possibilities. But then I started to wonder about a land with nearly nothing where everything reflects a brutal sameness. Big and cool, the ringworld is an image of the sublime, but it reflects the fantasies of a relatively newly minted colonial power: America. The idea of harvesting space flotsam and jetsam, the material from planets, moons, and asteroids of multiple star systems, to make a ring one AU out from the center of a solar system is insane in scope, fascinating, and bold as hell. In the first blush of my love of science fiction, Ringworld's gently curving steel reflected beauty like a brightly burning star.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |