User:Lsparrish/sandbox

Advocacy of Dyson Spheres in the Near Future
In 2012, Dvorsky covered the concept of humanity building a Dyson Sphere as a practical long term plan, which would result in solving humanity's resource needs including power and living space.

He referenced a talk by Stuart Armstrong (which focused on the big picture implications for the Fermi Paradox), but also made the claim that we could do this in the near term.

The steps referred to in the title are:


 * 1) Get energy
 * 2) Mine Mercury
 * 3) Get materials into orbit
 * 4) Make solar collectors
 * 5) Extract energy

Dvorsky goes on to describe Armstrong's scheme, which he describes as brilliant, to disassemble Mercury using solar power and self replicating robots.

Knapp Reaction
One of the first reactions against the concept included Alex Knapp, a Forbes blogger, and Phil Plait, whom he consulted by email. Knapp represents Phil Plait as demonstrating "in no uncertain terms" that the project doesn’t make sense.