Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
We're sustainably building megastructures too? How is that done exactly?
Fairly certain you're being intentionally dense, but I'll respond in good faith here:
I already told you the megastructures I want to build: a Lofstrom Loop, then a skyhook, and then an orbital ring. Wikipedia has good descriptions of each. Each would make getting mass into orbit much easier, so you start with the smallest to simplify the larger ones. The Lofstrom Loop would likely cost $10-$30 billion, and reduce cost/kg to a few hundred dollars. The skyhook and orbital ring would be orders of magnitude reductions. With the orbital ring up, we could literally winch payloads up to 80km, ship it around the Earth on maglev, or launch it off to other parts of the solar system - all powered by solar panels. If that's not 'sustainable' in your eyes, I don't know that further discussion will be productive.
Finally we agree on something.
What is the energy, emissions and materials costs of megastructure construction and maintenance? Where is this surplus coming from considering we're already in deep ecological overshoot.
How do you get back within the planetary boundaries limits when people are still trying to grow and expand and accumulate resources.
Sci-fi handwavium is ridiculous. Referencing wikipedia as you suggested says "In works by Alexander Bolonkin it is suggested that Lofstrom's project has many unsolved problems and that it is very far from a current technology.[7][8][9] "