Well, you can make a true sphere work pretty easily, really. It obviously
won't be in orbit, put you could use something similar to solar sails to
achieve the same result.
At Earth's orbital distance, the sun's gravitational acceleration is 0.006
m/s2, or 6 mm/s2
https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1127534
A "lattice sailer" solar sail can provide 117 mm/s2 acceleration according
to wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail
So it is fairly obvious that you could make a bunch of "fixed" solar sail
like structures in a sphere around the sun. Construction would even be
easy. Now for the fun part:
All those mirrors around the sun would be internally reflecting most of the
energy - which would greatly increase the internal energy of the system. So
you'd get much more power out of your solar cells. But then there is the
downside: it probably eventually makes the sun go nova, by runaway heating.
Unless you really can extract most of the energy in solar cells!
;-}
-David Summers
On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 8:15 AM roxanna Mason <rocketmaster.ken@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Interesting how Dyson was credited with the "sphere" but the concept was
actually proposed before him back in the 30's plus a true sphere wouldn't
even work, really is a ring or cluster of millions of independent orbiting
power-sats. All that said, indeed, hope Dyson was at peace with his/The
Maker.
On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 9:56 AM John Dom <johndom@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello out there,
Oops this sounds sentimental. It is.
https://www.space.com/freeman-dyson-dead-at-96.html
Only knew him by name & fame_yet I honestly suffer he had to let go.
Anybody on the list who was fortunate to talk to him in person? And what
did her say to you?
I did talk to a person who did, early this century. Casual chat it was.
Maybe his son carries on his missive for awhile.
Both are remembered a lot on YouTube fortunately.
John D.