Solar Shell

VISION

The surface gravity of the sun is 27.9 gees.

An object held at a radius of 3.68 million km above the solar center
would feel a 1.0 gee force directed toward the sun.

If it were possible to reduce the output of the sun to about 0.24% of
its current output at peak, and make it a variable star with a 24 hour
period, with an average intensity of 0.08% its current brilliance, the
intensity of sunlight would be the same at 3.68 million km radius as it
now appears on Earth and have the same diurnal variation. All things
being equal the sun's lifespan would increase from 5.5 billion years at
present to 6.6 trillion years with this lowered output.

If it were also possible to separate the metals from the interior of
the sun and use those materials to construct a shell at this radius
that shell would have 332,000x the surface area of Earth and using
metal abundances found in the solar surface as a reference the
materials removed from the sun would form a a steel shell at this
radius 1.3 km thick, a carbon shell 7.1 km thick, a silica shell 3.7 km
thick a water shell 1.8 km thick, this allows the entire surface
covered with air of the same composition as Earth's air today, and a
biosphere as abundant as Earth's biosphere today spread throughout the
outer 100 meters. Enough material exists in the Sun to do this right
now. So, if the technical issues could be worked out, this could be
constructed.

I assume the shell is structured on the exterior facing the stars, much
like the Earth's surface is structured, providing an extremely large
habitat for humanity. The varying sunlight within this shell is
assumed to be projected through openings in the shell and reflected
back by optical structures held above the atmosphere by the same
framework technology that makes the shell possible.

Above the shell I imagine a biosphere stacked, penetrated periodically
by mountains whose top is a lens that projects intense beams of light
upward to a space borne reflector atop a tower, providing sunlight to a
region. The steepness of the land, and its distance from the tower -
along with the peak height of the light source in the tower, determines
the seasonal variation with geography. Land masses, oceanic masses,
ice masses, all are structured to replicate hundreds of thousands of
earth-like bio-tiles that populate the entire surface. White light
that mimics the spectrum of current sun, is projected in a conical
spray from a mirror above the atmosphere and the skies of the outer
shell are lit pale blue with a golden solar disk, The mirror rises and
sets as it varies output and color, to mimic sunrise and sunset on Old
Earth.

Slung beneath the shell structure, and well below the biosphere, lit
from below, is the industrial world, suspended in tension from the
shell. Powered directly by lasers projected from the sun, and housing
the stored materials extracted from the sun, and not used to support
the biosphere, this industrial reserve represents the riches of a
million Earth's collected and organized for human industrial activity.


The 332,000 biotiles are illuminated with 332,000 solar-disk mirrors
above 332,000 mega-mountains - these mountains also project copious
energy into space on demand, to support interstellar travel, and
provide solar system defense. These laser beams, with reforming
satellite networks orbiting overhead, maintain environmental conditions
on every body orbiting the solar system that is important to humanity.


Populations of 2,500 trillion people could be supported at the same
density they occur on Earth today. With less ocean mass and greater
land masses, 7,000 trillion people could be supported at the same
density as they occur today. With surface areas engineered for higher
density, and supported by subhelion industry, commercial agriculture
and commercial forestry, densities as high as that found in Manhattan
may be possible. This would be 8.5 billion billion people.

One star supporting a galaxy full of people for 6.6 trillion years.
Surely, this is an engineered structure worth contemplating.

A dyson sphere has some 1,660x the area of this sphere, but it has
several problems.

1) the amounts of material needed to make it are at least 1,660x as
great
2) gravity over large areas to support a biosphere is not well
defined
3) The lifespan of the sphere will likely be less than 900 million
years as the sun becomes too bright
4) Radiation levels on dyson sphere are high, on this sphere they are
Earth normal.
5) Material is scarce on a dyson sphere, there is a super-abundance
of energy and materials to support human industry and interstellar
commerce here.

The sphere I propose here is far more feasible than the Dyson sphere.

With a 1% annual population growth rate this sphere could be filled to
the Manhattan density in 2,095 years! Since rising living standards
correlate negatively with population growth, we are unlikely to
maintain the needed growth rates naturally.

Even so, at 1% annual growth we can fill this sphere from our present
numbers in 4102AD.

This need not be a problem if we assume machine systems can grow faster
than us. Consider a hypothetical 1 kg self-replicating machine system,
that doubled every day. Once it is figured out, such a device could be
dropped into the sun and carry out the construction program to
transform the entire sun in 100 days. We have plenty of time to do
this job.

A 1 kg seed could be imagined built on Earth and projected toward
Jupiter with a conventional rocket and Jupiter would slow it to zero
velocity relative to the sun. The seed would fall into the sun and use
the energy and materials there to replicate itself. Within 100
doublings it would have transformed the entire sun into an engineered
structure, from there, it carries out programming or received
instructions to build other structures, including the shell just
described.

Such a system might easily build large reforming satellite that orbit
just inside Earth orbit and illuminate the Earth/Moon system as before
the transformation. Similar satellites might illuminate the other
worlds of our solar system.

Immense laser powered spacecraft might be built from a small fraction
of the materials ejected from the solar interior. These might be
powered by immense laser beams originating within the sun. Might be
piloted by advanced AI, and might be surrounded by Moravec-like robot
bushes, and other advanced droid forms. One spacecraft system, with
solar shell base, surrounded by 7,000 sq km of wilderness, and tended
by 100,000s of human level robots FOR EACH PERSON ON EARTH would arrive
and make itself known to its owner. It would be up to each owner to
determine what to do with his or her assets. Families might combine
resources.

This is a measure perhaps of what we are capable of creating as a
species, and what is available to us today within our own solar system.


Unconstrained by energy, habitat, labor, resources, or skill, humanity
will have realized the promise of science and technology.

A person labors approximately 2,000 hours per year in the US. There
are 144.2 million people who work, and a total of $13 trillion is
created by their activity. That's 288.4 billion hours and $45 for each
hour of activity. 1 human level robot would, with around 9% downtime
for service, would work 8,000 hours per year. Thus, each robotic
laborer in this fantasy would produce $360,000 of wealth - less any the
robot itself needed to survive. Say $350,000 per year - net. So,
100,000 robots on each 7,000 sq km kingdom within each world sized
bio-tile would produce $35 billion worth of wealth each year for each
human using the resources extracted from the subhelion sphere beneath
the bio-tile they inhabited. WIth normal discount rates applied, each
individual would be worth over 1/3 of a trillion dollars - considerably
more than the richest person on Earth today.

These figures are arrived at by simple considerations of materiel,
labor efficiency and methods of organizing assets used today in the
United States. Incomes might be substantially in excess of this figure
when one assumes that advanced AI will be capable of organizing
superior forms industry and business - especially those using
self-replicating methods, that made this particular form of wealth
possible.

Even so, using the low-end figure of $36 billion per person per year,
and reserving 10% of the total output for collective endeavours, would
permit the equivalent of $2.6 billion billion per year to be spent on
collective activities, such as interstellar exploration.

If 100,000 robots per person seems excessive, compare the mateial tied
up in robots and their support structure to the total amounts of
material available. Even so, if all robots were on the surface, fewer
than 1 robot per acre would be present- distributed below the surface,
in the industrial infrastructure beneath the bio-tile, robotic labor
would be largely invisible, except where they interact with their human
owners.