2. What's a Kardashav Level?
Kardashev Civilization Levels
• Level I: Uses as much energy as reaches the home planet from
its star.
• Level II: Uses as much energy as its home star outputs
• Level III: Able to harness all the power of the entire galaxy
3. Getting to Kardashav Level I
• Nuclear Fission
o Mass produced modular deep burn units with closed fuel
cycle
Deep burn burns 50% - 99% of fuel instead of the 5%
averaged today
o Accessing uranium and thorium including from the
oceans
o Molten salt thorium can be 99% fuel efficient
• Aerosat directed solar
o floating bubbles in upper atmosphere
5. Bubble Construction
• surface are of the earth: 510 trillion m2
o 1% is 510 billion m2
• There is mylar that is 2 microns thick and weighs about 2.4
g/m2
• 1% of US total plastic production could produce the amount
needed
• Scale up to space bubbles
o easy to make very large equivalent bubbles in vacuum
o
Editor's Notes
Type I : a civilization with a power output of about 4×10 12 W, i.e. a "technological level close to the level presently [1964] attained on earth". [3] This type was apparently later redefined to signify a civilisation able to harness all of the power available on its planet , approximately 10 16 to 10 17 W. Earth specifically has an available power of 1.74×10 17 W. Type II : a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from its home star , approximately 4×10 26 W. [3] The Sun outputs approximately 3.86×10 26 W. Type III : a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a whole galaxy , approximately 4×10 37 W. The actual value of this figure is extremely variable, since galaxies vary widely in size; the stated figure is the approximate power output of the Milky Way .
A society using current energy could last 5 billion years at current energy levels. http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/07/deep-burn-and-seriously-scaling-nuclear.html Current world nuclear power is 611 million tons of oil equivalent. (multiply by 7.1-7.4 for barrel of oil equivalent) This is from 64000 tons of Uranium per year being burned at about 5% efficiency. 3200 tons of Uranium if deep burn reactors were used. Molten salt - 99% (two were built in the 60s and 70s, India,Japan, Europe have designs and research efforts to bring them back) Bubbles for collecting and focusing solar power make a Dyson swarm very light weight. A society using 100 times our current energy could last millions of years. A yottawatt civilization would be roughly equivalent to a Kardashev 1.75 civilization. Fission, fusion and space solar can get a civilization to Yottawatt for long periods.
The Hall Weather Machine is a thin global cloud consisting of small transparent balloons that can be thought of as a programmable and reversible greenhouse gas because it shades or reflects the amount of sunlight that hits the upper stratosphere. These balloons are each between a millimeter and a centimeter in diameter, made of a few-nanometer thick diamondoid membrane. Each balloon is filled with hydrogen to enable it to float at an altitude of 60,000 to 100,000 feet, high above the clouds It is bisected by an adjustable sheet, and also includes solar cells, a small computer, a GPS receiver to keep track of its location, and an actuator to occasionally (and relatively slowly) move the bisecting membrane between vertical and horizontal orientations. Just like with a regular high-altitude balloon, the heavier control and energy storage systems would be on the bottom of the balloon to automatically set the vertical axis without requiring any energy. The balloon would also have a water vapor/hydrogen generator system for altitude control, giving it the same directional navigation properties that an ordinary hot-air balloon has when it changes altitudes to take advantage of different wind directions at different altitudes. By controlling a tenth of one percent of solar radiation is enough to force global climate in any direction we want. One percent is enough to change regional climate, and ten percent is enough for serious weather control.
So if you could achieve large scale production (equal to 1% of total US plastic film production in 2012) of 1 gram per square meter balloon sheeting with a diamond surface treatment and the other parts of the system there would be 73,000 tons of weather machine produced. This would cover 73 billion square meters. In about 8 years, one would be able to produce a 1% coverage Hall Weather Machine. With better than todays nanotechnology one could easily produce a more advanced version of the hall weather machine. It is a weather machine and a means to use not that much material to get to Kardashev level one. http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/nanotechnology-for-climate-control-and.html
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. http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/04/dyson-swarms-and-dyson-spheres.html http://www.islandone.org/LEOBiblio/SETI1.HTM 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. A single bubble can be 1 meter in earth gravity, 100 kilometer in low earth orbit or 1000 kilometers in deep space. Foams made of many bubbles could be far larger in size.
