Solar Earth Shield

If I was in command of earths space resources I would have built and sent automated probes to the moon to find signs of valuable mineral deposits. Then there would be an entire industry set up just to mine the moon.

We could use some of the resources we found on the moon to build a solar shield that we could control the amount of sunlight that reached the earth. The earth shield would remain in a orbit similar to where SOHO is currently positioned and would be able to let in variable amounts of light.

Of course such a device would be self-powered as it would draw power directly from solar energy. It would need constant maintenance and would have to be powered as the solar wind would be a strong force against such a large object. But we could ensure that it was in a stable orbit by ensuring there are powered thrusters keeping it in place.

That's what I would do anyway...

Neon Haze

Why would you want to control the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth? Here in England we BEG for more sunlight, man it's cold

Originally posted by phixion
Why would you want to control the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth? Here in England we BEG for more sunlight, man it's cold

firstly I am from London so I'm suffering from the freeze too....

But my reasons
are as follows: -

The global dimming phenomenon has reduced the sunlight reaching the earth 10% in the last 30 years.... this has been caused by the amount of physical particles in the atmosphere and causing the amount of cloud to increase.... This effect counters the global warming we are also experiencing due to Carbonmonoxide levels increasing.

Now the problem is this......

We are all reducung the amount of polution in the atmosphere (Which is GREAT) but in doing so we are also reducung the effect of Global dimming and that leads to a run away Global warming that would spell disaster for all humans within 100 years....

My solution...

We cut Polution emissions but we build a Solar Shield so we can uniformly control the solar radiation hitting earth.

Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Neon.

No-one will do anything until it's too late. I can assure you of that.

i don't know how safe it would be to mess with the weight of the moon, taking all that material and moving it around could seriously affect life on earth.

anyway im in london too. come on guys it could be worse in england, i know its pretty miserable but at least we can go out side without the aid of snow gear and super warm arctic jackets.

[edit on 28-2-2005 by superduperman]

Why control the sun's emmissions from earth when you can go straight to the source, the sun. I'm sure there are ways to obtain desired results in the sun's control of combustion of hydrogen.

ie. Say the US gov sends a nuke on a trajectory to collide with a solar flare while the flare's aiming point is say theoritically inline with Mars. By giving the solar flare an advantage (creating more space for hydrogen combustion), you create an amount of solar activity in the Martian atmosphere previously thought to be catastophic, and since Mars has no shield to "control incomming and outgoing sun emmissions", it will now experience the consequence of this action, "terraforming". Only if you could maintain such an operation for a variable amount of time could you achieve divine results.

Neonhaze, do you have any idea how much it would cost to develop the infrastructure to do all that stuff?

Do you know how much material it would take to make a shield -- even if it were aluminized mylar -- to shield major parts of the Earth?

Do you have any idea how you would keep it in place? Do you think thrusters would work on a mylar shield? And if you used a material that was strong enough to flex without losing its shape, do you know how thick it would have to be -- even if were made of carbon fiber?

And do you think that the problems of a climate change, which is so complex that the most powerful supercomputers in the world can't predict it, will be changed by putting up a ten-thousand-mile wide umbrella?

I'm not saying that your idea is impossible, but my gut feeling is that it's not very feasible. I suggest you pencil-whip the problem from an engineering standpoint to see if it's even feasible to build the thing first.

Hi there,

I just thought I would resurrect this old thread of mine from 2 years ago..

The reason is the following.

This paper examines the creation of an artificial planetary ring about the Earth to shade it and reduce global warming. The ring could be composed of passive particles or controlled spacecraft with extended parasols.

Earth Rings for Planetary Environment control



Guns and sunshades to rescue climate

The mirrors would have to be placed in concentric rings in orbit around the equator.



Could earth in our future be the fifth planet in the solar system to have rings???

All the best,

NeoN HaZe.

[edit on 4-2-2007 by Neon Haze]

Man made sun shields are not a viable alternative for the forseeable future. The time required to build them and put them in place would be way longer than we have available--and that's assuming we have the technology & resources and will to do so, which we don't.

I pray that this is never implemented. For one, the sheer cost, I think, would be crippling.

But even worse is tampering with the climate. Humans are nowhere NEAR understanding how the variable climate of the Earth works. The last thing we need is to start playing with the sunlight that hits the Earth, the only result could be disaster.

Then you can consider that, with such power, a device like that could be used as a weapon.

Bah! Kids and their fantasies. Controling sunlight!

sunlight isnt just mere photonic energy. there are hundreds of different purposes that are affected. Doing this would have a serious cost to our climate, our health and the health of all plant life on the plant, not to mention our economy. Lastly the psychological effects of "diminishing" sunlight on human productivity would be a problem too.

Perhaps the most basic problem is getting your mining done on the moon . How do you propose to do that? there is no equipment that can do that and neither has the technology been developed. Its impractical to do so without a really beneficial cause. This seems foolish at best.

Originally posted by IAF101
Bah! Kids and their fantasies. Controling sunlight!

Kids like David Deutsch?

www.ted.com...

Skip to near the end.

Originally posted by CaptainLazy

Originally posted by IAF101
Bah! Kids and their fantasies. Controling sunlight!

Kids like David Deutsch?

www.ted.com...

Skip to near the end.

Excellent Find!!!

David Dutch has a brilliant mind!! I have met him in person at a few conferences and he has the uncanny ability of explaining abstract concepts in simple every day terms.

David's whole approach to the many worlds scenario was born from a quantum experiment with light.

The Feynman Double Slit

Going a little off topic but....

It's nice to see that David here is thinking laterally and aiming his thoughts on to issues that affect us all.. Born out of mere curiosity.

I will add that there are many many variables to the climate, so many in fact that the very principles of Quantum mechanics are called for in attempting to calculate or forecast.

However, I am stating that if we were to have control over one very large variable, we could at least have a hand in the direction out planet heads. I am not suggesting an irreversible change, more a control mechanism.

If Humanity is to survive on earth we must gain control over the changing environment, otherwise the environment will change us!!

All the best,

NeoN HaZe.

[edit on 5-2-2007 by Neon Haze]

Cop out solution that should only even be considered as New York is flooding. I'm not saying that to be callous or anything as I would not want that to happen, but frankly these silver bullet solutions need to be picked apart and shown to the world for what they are, a huge waste of effort for a problem that is fixable using more ... down to earth methods.

I'm not saying that Space Assets can't help with the problem, (Solar Based Energy, Resource Mining, Colonization and The Space elevator could prove to be the Greenest solutions we have in the longterm pipeline), I just think that altering the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth is a really bad idea and completely overkill. We make the slightest mistake in our calculations and we may end up starting a runaway iceage... Unlikely, sure. But knowing us it's a distinct possibility. An old engineering adage really struck a chord with me growing up and it goes something like this, "If something can go wrong it will go wrong eventually." That's me just paraphrasing it of course, but it's definitely as true as the Millennium Falcon principal.

[edit on 5-2-2007 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by sardion2000
but frankly these silver bullet solutions need to be picked apart and shown to the world for what they are, a huge waste of effort for a problem that is fixable using more ... down to earth methods.

I disagree, I think that the environment has changed and will continue to change (albeit accelerated) what ever we do.

I just think that altering the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth is a really bad idea and completely overkill. We make the slightest mistake in our calculations and we may end up starting a runaway iceage...

The operative word here is control, we would be able to control the amount of sun light that reached earth and where it reached to varying degrees.

That means we would be able to balance warming vs. freezing.

I can see there is the capacity to use this as a weapon as someone mentioned earlier, and that is of course a danger. It does raise the question of who would have ultimate control and who would be the person(s) with their finger on the trigger....

However, having said that, haven't we had the capacity to wipe ourselves out by other means for decades??

"If something can go wrong it will go wrong eventually." That's me just paraphrasing it of course, but it's definitely as true as the Millennium Falcon principal.

Very true... which is why there would need to be multiple redundancies built into the system.... and it would have to be somehow totally hacker proof... if that is even possible....

Anyway...

All the best,

NeoN HaZe.

[edit on 5-2-2007 by Neon Haze]

it's not such a daunting task to deploy a 'sunscreen' in space

a millimeter or less shade screen
perhaps stretched/anchored to pencil diameter carbon 'rods'

~Think of a sailing ship & the sails, attached to a crossbeam, & then the lower ends are fastened to anchor points~

the solar wind itself would stretch out the sail/shade screen

all these components would be sent aloft by newer shuttles.
then delivered by robot drones to the geosynchronious workstation & living quarters.

1 km wide 'patches' of the shade-screen material would be attached
to the carbon fiber rod, now some 100 km in length,
by the 'pod' spacecrafts (think deep sea manned submersibles as a model)

now, visualize row after row of these 1 km wide X 100 km long structures
being built side by side, and from afar you recognize the project looks just like an accordian bellows

all we do is attach about 1000 of these structures together, end-to-end,

then just tow the two ends apart, Viola', the unfolded accordian screen becomes a gigantic sheet/sail/sunscreen for the planet

(but the bonus point is that the screen is made of a photo-voltic material which also generates electricity, along with filtering the way too energetic solar rays & radiation)

Originally posted by CaptainLazy

Originally posted by IAF101
Bah! Kids and their fantasies. Controling sunlight!

Kids like David Deutsch?

www.ted.com...

Skip to near the end.

That is not a lecture, that is some rant to amuse kids. Wasted quite a bit of my time with it BTW, told me nothing I dont know already.

Originally posted by St Udio
all these components would be sent aloft by newer shuttles.
then delivered by robot drones to the geosynchronious workstation & living quarters.
..........................
then just tow the two ends apart, Viola', the unfolded accordian screen becomes a gigantic sheet/sail/sunscreen for the planet

One word: Fantasy.

Instead of pointing out thousands of flaws in your fantasy. I will just describe the present. We are incapable of maintaining a space station, despite participation from all space capable nations. We are still unable to deploy the space station to its fullest potential. All work on further compartments has ceased. The space station is still not what it was promised to be and further more there is little hope it will ever become all that it was marketed to be.
Funding from all nations for this effort has decreased due to dismal progress and even more dismal scientific collaboration.

In short, nobody cares about a white elephant in the sky. People and governments are only interested in something that provides results, tangible results. As long as the nations of the world are busy build cellphones and digital cameras, you cant expect to build "space assets". We dont have the technolgy or the inclination to erect a damn space curtain!

Saw this and thought of this thread;
UK BBC Documentary on global warming prevention ideas on tonight/

Five of the world's top scientists propose five radical scientific inventions which could stop global warming dead in its tracks. The ideas include: a giant sunshade in space to filter out the sun's rays and help cool us down; forests of artificial trees that would breath in carbon dioxide and stop the green house effect and a fleet futuristic yachts that will shoot salt water into the clouds thickening them and cooling the planet.

Are these the crazy ideas of mad scientists in white coats or could they be our saviours and save the world from global warming?

LINK

[edit on 19-2-2007 by CaptainLazy]

Hi there,

I watched the programme you mentioned and I have to say it had some elegant idea's

I think that it has been made very clear now that this planet we call home is undergoing some major changes and we have to intervene to keep it where we want it, so to speak....

The most pertinent comment on this programme was.

"some people say we shouldn't meddle with the environment... But we already have, and we need to meddle with it some more if we are to take control"

I couldn't agree more. Nature is a powerful thing but not as powerful as the human capacity to think.

We need to act and we need to act now.

Although I advocate the solar deflection with the use of mirrors, there are some other solutions that are very very interesting.

I can see a ranking system being put in place with the solutions being ranked by cost and control (over all reversibility)

In this programme we saw the first real glimpses of a massive rail gun launcher for space bound hardware... This although an amazing tech to have is simply way to costly.

The best way of constructing a space based structure a few hundred kilometres in diameter would be to construct it in space, using materials readily available on the moon.

If we were to start now we would have a workable solution within 70-100 years...

So because of the time scale we would need an interim solution...

Anyway...



All the best,

NeoN HaZe.