July 21, 2011

Basic Roadmap to Kardashev Level Two

image by Steve Bowers, this power collection swarm consists of thousands of elements in inclined orbits, each with a slightly different ascending node and pericenter. This arrangement ensures the elements never come close to each other. The various orbits form a toroid shape, surrounding the star.

Kennedy quote - Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not

Tom Murphy, associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, peak oil/doomerLimit to Growther is writing at theOildrum about how absurd it is to have 2.3% world GDP growth for 1300 years because humanity would need to become Kardashev level 3.

He just makes the statement that Kardashev level one, two and three are more and more absurd using some charts and not looking at how to do it.

Here I summarize some of how to do get to Kardashev level two.
Getting to Kardashev level two can be easy.
If we end up with a lazy Kardashev level two. Other solar systems make close (within about one light year) passes of our solar system every million years or so.
If humanity chooses to stop or slow growth at Kardashev level two that will a choice for them at that time. A Kardashev level two civilization can then migrate over to other solar systems and keep splitting to get to Kardashev level three.

We can get to 1-10% of Kardashev level one by staying on the planet and leveraging factory mass produced deep burn nuclear with ocean uranium supplies and using aerostat directed solar. Bubbles for collecting and focusing solar power make a Dyson swarm very light weight.

I have written plenty of achieving the level of about kardashev 1 and then 2.
Those are the usual terms for
all solar energy for one planet - Kardashev level 1
all solar energy from one star - kardashev level 2

So getting closer or fully up to Kardashev level 1.

Advanced fission


A society using current energy could last 5 billion years at current energy levels. If you are earthbound the sun expands into a red giant at that point and if you were stuck with crappy technology then all of humanity is done at that point. Plenty of other astronomical bad stuff can happen over the course of a billion years like getting hit with a big asteroid. So the static technology plan is always hosed on those time scales.



Hall Weather Machine




The surface are of the earth is 510 trillion square meters.

So getting to 0.1% coverage is 510 billion square meters.







Mark I and Mark II weather machines.

Weather machine Mark I - many small aerostats—a hydrogen balloon—at a guess an optimal size is somewhere between a millimeter and a centimeter in diameter that have a continuous layer in the stratosphere. Each aerostat contains a mirror, and also a control unit consisting of a radio receiver, computer, and GPS receiver. About 100 billion tonnes of material with regular technology and 10 million tons with more advanced nanotechnology.

Once you are approaching kardashev level one or even at ten times the current world economy then funding a true space industry in the solar system is trivial

If your nanotechnology is at this level then making spaceships and sending nanofactories to Venus and asteroids would be relatively simple. It would be about twenty million tons of material for the mirror bubbles and converters for each earth scale energy system. Then the electricity has to be transmitted and distributed to where it needs to be used (a super-grid which could be wireless)

Two billion of those systems turns humanity into a Kardashev Type II civilization.

Producing large bubbles in space is something that looks very doable.
The bubbles would be set up to focus solar energy to make the collection of solar power easier.

The most interesting Nasa Institute Advanced Concepts (NIAC) study released from the March 2007 meeting is Devon Crowe of PSI corporation for making large space structures from bubbles that are made rigid using metals or UV curing.


Metal can be evaporated to coat the inside of the bubble for reflective sails and telescopes.

I also think that GDP growth will get faster. So we will get to (or need to get to) Kardashev level one and level two far sooner than your 2.3% projection.

I have also covered Dyson swarms and Dyson Spheres


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