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[PTTG??]

That's why I like O'neil and Bishop habitats. They can be of steel or magic graphine respectively and won't explode, they don't have anything in the "center," and they're REALLY REALLY COOL.

[i2amroy]

Or would the pressure of the incident solar winds already be able to help you out?

No, both solar wind and solar radiation pressure run into the exact same thing as gravity where the reduced strength on the farther side is perfectly balanced by the fact that the farther side has more area now.

That said you could certainly use solar radiation pressure (not to be confused with the solar wind) instead of rocket boosters to manage any sort of drift. If you put LCD screens on your solar sail like Japan did with IKAROS then it gives you the ability to change the reflectiveness of your sail at wind, thus changing the amount of force that it exerts. This would mean that all it would cost you to adjust for drift is electricity which just means sticking a solar panel or two on each solar sail. Even factoring in for the occasional replacement screen needed, it would still be much cheaper then using rocket fuel.

(Funnily enough a Dyson Sphere stabilized in such a way would be virtually the same as a series of solar statites in a ring around the star, just not quite as flexible (in exchange for capturing less energy).)

[Starver]

Or would the pressure of the incident solar winds already be able to help you out?

No, both solar wind and solar radiation pressure run into the exact same thing as gravity where the reduced strength on the farther side is perfectly balanced by the fact that the farther side has more area now.

I was a hair's-breadth away from trying the same integration trick as that which shows that a shell is gravitationally-neutral to anything located within it (and thus vice-versa), to try to disprove the idea.

But then I got distracted by the difference between various degrees of elastic and inelastic impulse, and where the factor between 2 (for perfectly mirrored radiation/particles) or 1 (for a perfectly 'matt' surface) sits in the otherwise roughly self-cancelling formula.  (Probably nowhere that affects the self-cancelling effect, actually, but my mind was elsewhere.)

I also remembered the various apparent paradoxes in the operation of the radiometer... and then started pondering about the viability of heat-responsive concave/convex elements (as in the monochromatic version of the 'light mill') that flex appropriately if that part of the shell/star starts to approach the star/that part of the shell.  ...and then wondering if this would be like the "overweight lorry full of budgies" problem, anyway. )


...but, anyway, your(/Japan's) idea of dynamically varying the impulse by LCD methods sounds more practical.  At least while the combined array of electrically-driven 'mechanisms' remain sufficiently operative.

[jaked122]

Haven't they heard of a Dyson Swarm?

 A swarm of satellites that only have to mostly eclipse the sun and absorb light and power. That's plausible, Matrioshka brain is usually in this form, but is not the only one that exists. Fairly efficient, and not even beyond our capabilities, beyond getting to orbit that is. After that, we have the technology for this.

It's also kinda shit for moving around in if you can't be encoded to a coherent beam of life. In any case, Dyson Spheres have a lot of problems that make them unattractive to build, such as the aforementioned solar wind and simple stress on the structure.

I want to hope, but in all likelihood, it might just be an uncommon configuration of asteroid field with huge belts or swarms of material that weren't created by intelligent process, rather just occurring naturally through collisions. Maybe with a high electrostatic charge due to a prevalence of alpha or beta radiation to the exclusion of the other types.

If it is a level 2 civilization, I'd be very happy, but this seems very far from certain, so I'm just going to assume that it is some kind of rare formation.

[Cthulhu]

Yeah. 

Well I have cloud to butt.  So my main wishful-thinking theory was a massive dyson butt, satellites or asteroids coated in solar panels.

[Starver]

...meanwhile, closer to home, Europe and Russia to the Moon?

[Il Palazzo]

...meanwhile, closer to home, Europe and Russia to the Moon?

tl;dr;
ESA and Roscosmos want to work together to fake their own moon landing, and maybe even shoot a sitcom.
Meanwhile, China is working hard on their own fake landing project, with a release date likely to predate the European show.

[jaked122]

Just out of curiosity, what motivates your distrust of them? I mean, it does sound like something their government would do, but is there really that much incentive for them to risk other countries debunking their claims?

[TheBiggerFish]

Just out of curiosity, what motivates your distrust of them? I mean, it does sound like something their government would do, but is there really that much incentive for them to risk other countries debunking their claims?

Methinks it was a reference to the ever-popular "NASA FAKED THE MOON LANDINGS ON A SOUNDSTAGE DUH" theory.
Conclusively debunked by the Apollo retroreflectors.

[Starver]

Just out of curiosity, what motivates your distrust of them? I mean, it does sound like something their government would do, but is there really that much incentive for them to risk other countries debunking their claims?

Methinks it was a reference to the ever-popular "NASAL FAKED THE MOON LANDINGS ON A SOUNDSTAGE DUH" theory.
Conclusively debunked by the Apollo retroreflectors.

The retroreflectors alone don't debunk the no-manned-landings argument.  They could have been so easily landed on dumb, unmanned probes at any¹ or all² of the Apollo sites.  (The Russians did at least as much.)

Instead, consider that a whole bunch of left-in-situ experiments and equipment (including all but one of the flags, one of them having been blown over by the return launch) have now been reasonably photographed from above by various resources should be more convincing (assuming you don't utterly distrust those images), or at least means some rather complex robotic distribution system on the lander deployed the 'furniture' of the astronauts' apparent presence.


But until a sceptic gets to go up there him/herself and conduct their own CSI-type analysis of landing sights [edit: <- should have typed 'sites', but those too...], there'll always be arguments against³.  Some potentially valid ("Flag-planting robot arm!"), some being blind or wilful misunderstanding of the existing evidence ("The flag was fluttering!!") and some being so out there as to be unanswerable ("They'd already landed on the Moon, years before!!! The Apollo program was just a sham to let them release a lot of 'new' science to the world!!!")




¹ Allowing for "the first landings were faked, but they actually did the later ones" theories.

² Anyone tried looking at the proposed Apollo 13 landing site with the same tools?  Hey, maybe, the 'fake landing package' got there, even while the manned-mission suffered its (unplanned) problems while in the Earth-hugging holding orbit...

³ And there still might.  Depends on if they are inclined to believe more in government-sponsored perception-and-memory-altering procedures than the possibility that they were personally sent to the Moon just because they were asking for more proof.  And, to be honest, even I would have my doubts, in the exact same position.

[That Wolf]

I have a Spider-Goat silk space suit   
Transgenetics baby

Sorry I thought you had heard, yes your mother left your father for a spider but your father was an arse

[Egan_BW]

huh?

[That Wolf]

huh?

Oh yeah, the first attempt at a chimera was a spider goat, it escaped no big deal /sarcasm

We should breed a species of human for space, give them nocturnal vision maybe

[Egan_BW]

I don't mean to be rude, but you're not making much sense?

[That Wolf]

Rude? How are you being rude.
Just next time dont end a statement with a question mark, I totally Ron Burgundy that one in my head.


I read in new science that there is a colosal blob of liquid water in space