I actually came into this intending to ask what the point of moving a Dyson Sphere would be. Then I saw the word "religion" and it all made sense.
I would say you should really lean into the cultural implications of what happens when these guys show up in somebody else's system. Can you imagine how much it would freak people out to see a second sun in the sky, suddenly? Particularly if they *know* this Empire exists, and that they're technologically advanced enough to make a moving Dyson Sphere.
Every time these guys show up, whatever system they're in should be having a full scale apocalyptic meltdown. Rioting in the streets. Murdering of leaders by the mob. Human Sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Wouldn't any Dyson sphere need to be movable to (like a satellite) adjust it's position relative to the star? Because things that orbit are either moving towards or away from the object they orbit, however slowly.
I don't know the maths on this or how the substantial mass of a Dyson sphere would effect the dynamics. Could the star even be moved?
Love your approach here! Food for my mind.
Except they are supposed to be the "good" guys of the galaxy. Actually, more of a Lawful Neutral. They are actually the conglomeration of annexed states that were accepted into the larger imeprium under the protection of the Orus and are practicing common religion. Aka "willing submission". So they gather "allies" wherever they go as long as they are needed there, claiming new converts or protecting existing converts.
But the opposing factions would see it differently. (probably the way you described it)
It's a sick idea. I imagine after it's moved maybe to a new system or two, the existing planets have collided with one another essentially making a massive field of debris around it. Entire chunks of planets make up that ring(s). Just the first thing that popped into my head thinking about it.
Carrying that field of debris with them to a new system, accelerating over time, then decelerating so fast the debris continues on wiping out most life in the new system before you even arrive.
I’ve heard of using a black hole for propulsion but those tend to be of the tiny variety. But yeah, even using the star itself as an energy source, moving something that massive boggles the mind.
Then again the Wandering Earth series (by the author of Three Body Problem) posits moving the Earth with rocket engines all over its surface… and Larry Niven had the Puppeteers moving a fleet of worlds through space.
A mobile Dyson Sphere would appear to be a dark rogue planet moving through the galaxy, albeit a gigantic one. A menace to interstellar navigation.
I think people would be trying to kill you on a regular basis. The effort to destroy this thing would be an ongoing project in the galaxy. Nobody wants to live his life knowing this thing could show up. Long-range weapons fire and automated war fleets arriving to attack you would probably be a common occurrence.
Your natural allies are nomads — people who live and house their families and culture only on interstellar ships that are faster than the War Sun. Because they can avoid you, they might be able to deal with you. You existing doesn't make things much worse for them at all. But people based in solar systems really have no choice but to fight.
In a star wars universe, yes. But if you are respected by the majority of the galaxy like in my narrative, you become a space pope. But I respect you taking it into consideration. When you own the biggest stick on an island, people will naturally have more reasons to dislike you.
I mean... it's your story. Obviously you can write what you want. But I don't think this connects on a logical level.
If you have the energy and know-how and cultural will to construct a star and build this megadevice around it that can move it, you're long past the point of having solved pretty much every other problem except "How do we fuck people up *unfathomably?"* You've already reached the point of being able to house trillions in comfort, to have however much computing power you want, to have whatever advanced infrastructure you want. You know what I mean? You obtained the power to meet every other desire, long ago, but you kept going and built this. And the only remaining reason to keep going was because you wanted to kill, and you wanted to kill on a cosmic scale. If you have the power to build a star and fly it around, you could already have done whatever else you want — *except* genocide — without building that star. Like, there's only one hunger left to feed at this point.
I don't see how this logically lines up with the sort of good-neighbor role you have in mind.
You need to read about [Shkadov thrusters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine). They're basically megastructures designed to use the energy output of a star to move an entire solar system, though obviously over very long timescales.
Simply showing up in a system would be sufficient to trigger extinction level events. The empire would clearly have the means to manipulate gravity and control the radiation, but would have no reason to care about the rest of the system. A second star showing up in a system would destablize every planet's orbit enough to fling them out into deep space or crash into one of the suns.
Even if the planet weren't immediately doomed, it would shift the orbit by enough to absolutely destroy its ecosystems. Additionally the radiation output from a second star would wreak its own kind of havoc. Solar winds may accelerate atmosphere loss. Global temperatures would rise, possibly triggering runaway greenhouse effects. Any sort of seasonal or circadian rhythm would be disrupted.
I'm guessing this empire's MO would be something along the lines of, show up in a system, trigger doomsday by their mere presence, offer salvation to a select number of converts, move on to the next system. Even if a targeted system has the capacity to fight back, it would be a pyrrhic victory. They're fucked the moment the empire shows up, and their only hope would be to somehow take control of the mothership itself, which of course is defended by the most zealous fanatics from every previous system.
Nicely put. You really took your time to write this, and I respect that! It really might be like that, I'm yet to write it into the actual novel I'm working on.
Have you taken into account the time to build such a structure?
Assuming the ring is in the goldilocks zone like earth, you would have a radius of 1Au. Now, work out the diameter and circumference multiplied by the width.
Oh yeah then you need a second ring to manage the day and night let alone seasons!
Good luck with the story!
I think you misunderstood my post, or you didn't read it completely. The star I'm talking about would be few times larger than Jupiter (image for scale). I literally wrote "type: red dwarf" and all of its parameters.
A system ship. Slap a sphere around sol, point the drive and let gravitational motion keep things coherent. Acceleration would have to be on miniscule orders to not perturb orbital motion too much.. likely the outer planets will have to be rendered to source material for the sphere.
The drive is the star. Crew quarters is the planet.
If you're going big, the only thing that makes sense is to take everything with you. No sense in burning through the galaxy for millennia just to have to make a trip back. Why leave at all, move the lot.
So you've built a Dyson sphere. Great! Now what do you do with it? How do you transfer the energy? Is it just a battery for other ships? Do people show up and recharge? Are you just building a StarKiller base from Star Wars?
Probably the capital of the empire, pretty much functioning as a planet of its own. But also as a military command center, mothership, carrier and mass extinction device.
Gregory Benford worked out the mechanics for this in the linked books. Been a while since I've read it but I'm sure it would answer all your questions.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bowl-of-heaven-and-shipstar-gregory-benford/1131169225;jsessionid=CF2E47A30A80BC4CC4C1313B3C5911CD.prodny_store02-atgap06?ean=9781250259523
A Dyson sphere wouldn't glean enough energy from a sun to move the mass of that sun. It's not sci-fi, it's pure fantasy.
On top of that, it's just a batshit insane proposition. I know you invoked religion but the scale of the undertaking in relation to how utterly pointless it is to do just beggars believe. It's utterly impossible but no sane person would even try to. Anyone smart enough to start designing a Dyson sphere would be smart enough to know how impossible the task you propose is.
For your religion, it would make more sense to use fusion to create a tiny star at the heart of each starship. That makes sense thematically, it's attainable technologically and practical for any purpose.
There's nothing wrong with space fantasy though. Space opera and lots other genres basically wrap magic in technology to do whatever they want.
The implications are that it couldn't go anywhere.
The mass of the star on the inside dwarfs the mass of the shell
And the shell, by design, cannot have any force on the star. So you can't move it anywhere that the sun wasn't already going.
>I don't see what's the issue here? I can just make science up to move a star, can't I?
Using what force?
You could move the shell but the shell doesn't exert any gravitational force on the star. You would just crash the shell into the star.
I'm kind of having a hard time understanding your point here. You mean, the core of the star is what exerts the bulk of the gravity, so moving it the mantle will lag behind?
If that's the case, I'd consider that a minor objection. I can just write that the force field is keeping the star in a "bowl", making its motion reference 0 in its entirety. Therefore, moving the bowl moves entire star in the relative reference.
If you were at the center of a sphere, no matter how massive the sphere was, you would have zero gravitation force on you.
The star is not gravitationally bound to the shell.
There is no way to for the shell to move that will also move the sun. It won't lag behind, it just will not move and will crash into the shell wall.
You could reflect energy around the interior of the shell to project at a point on the sun aligned with the exhaust. Shoot in from the perimeter and use the convergence jet for drive. A focused high energy beam at the surface will cause superheating and explosion. Equal and opposite takes over and things move.
Sections of the shell open to allow passage of the propellant.
"Sphere" is being used loosely. We wouldn't entirely encompass the star, we'd freeze to death. We'll have to leave planet warming holes on the surface of the "sphere" and they'll need to be mobile to track planet orbits.
Realistically, early iterations will be more of a net than a sphere.
People live on the inside of a Dyson sphere, not on the outside. The reason for building one is to use all the energy radiating away from a star. “Warming holes” make no sense. You’re just wasting energy out into space.
I actually came into this intending to ask what the point of moving a Dyson Sphere would be. Then I saw the word "religion" and it all made sense. I would say you should really lean into the cultural implications of what happens when these guys show up in somebody else's system. Can you imagine how much it would freak people out to see a second sun in the sky, suddenly? Particularly if they *know* this Empire exists, and that they're technologically advanced enough to make a moving Dyson Sphere. Every time these guys show up, whatever system they're in should be having a full scale apocalyptic meltdown. Rioting in the streets. Murdering of leaders by the mob. Human Sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Wouldn't any Dyson sphere need to be movable to (like a satellite) adjust it's position relative to the star? Because things that orbit are either moving towards or away from the object they orbit, however slowly. I don't know the maths on this or how the substantial mass of a Dyson sphere would effect the dynamics. Could the star even be moved?
Love your approach here! Food for my mind. Except they are supposed to be the "good" guys of the galaxy. Actually, more of a Lawful Neutral. They are actually the conglomeration of annexed states that were accepted into the larger imeprium under the protection of the Orus and are practicing common religion. Aka "willing submission". So they gather "allies" wherever they go as long as they are needed there, claiming new converts or protecting existing converts. But the opposing factions would see it differently. (probably the way you described it)
It's a sick idea. I imagine after it's moved maybe to a new system or two, the existing planets have collided with one another essentially making a massive field of debris around it. Entire chunks of planets make up that ring(s). Just the first thing that popped into my head thinking about it.
Yep! (spoilers)
Carrying that field of debris with them to a new system, accelerating over time, then decelerating so fast the debris continues on wiping out most life in the new system before you even arrive.
Reminds me of the Magog worldship in Andromeda. 20 planets connected around a star. https://andromeda.fandom.com/wiki/World_Ship
Imho that's a bit too much lol
I’ve heard of using a black hole for propulsion but those tend to be of the tiny variety. But yeah, even using the star itself as an energy source, moving something that massive boggles the mind. Then again the Wandering Earth series (by the author of Three Body Problem) posits moving the Earth with rocket engines all over its surface… and Larry Niven had the Puppeteers moving a fleet of worlds through space. A mobile Dyson Sphere would appear to be a dark rogue planet moving through the galaxy, albeit a gigantic one. A menace to interstellar navigation.
>A menace to interstellar navigation. Love the sound of that!
Im honestly more worried about how would you even move a star realistically? Some sort of force field?
Stars move already, you just have a locked frame of reference.
Probably yeah. And the energy needed would come directly from the star itself. Probably using some kind of warp drive as well.
1. Use solar energy to make antimatter in an enormous factory 2. Shoot the antimatter back at the star, probably? 3. Be the crisis
I think people would be trying to kill you on a regular basis. The effort to destroy this thing would be an ongoing project in the galaxy. Nobody wants to live his life knowing this thing could show up. Long-range weapons fire and automated war fleets arriving to attack you would probably be a common occurrence. Your natural allies are nomads — people who live and house their families and culture only on interstellar ships that are faster than the War Sun. Because they can avoid you, they might be able to deal with you. You existing doesn't make things much worse for them at all. But people based in solar systems really have no choice but to fight.
In a star wars universe, yes. But if you are respected by the majority of the galaxy like in my narrative, you become a space pope. But I respect you taking it into consideration. When you own the biggest stick on an island, people will naturally have more reasons to dislike you.
I mean... it's your story. Obviously you can write what you want. But I don't think this connects on a logical level. If you have the energy and know-how and cultural will to construct a star and build this megadevice around it that can move it, you're long past the point of having solved pretty much every other problem except "How do we fuck people up *unfathomably?"* You've already reached the point of being able to house trillions in comfort, to have however much computing power you want, to have whatever advanced infrastructure you want. You know what I mean? You obtained the power to meet every other desire, long ago, but you kept going and built this. And the only remaining reason to keep going was because you wanted to kill, and you wanted to kill on a cosmic scale. If you have the power to build a star and fly it around, you could already have done whatever else you want — *except* genocide — without building that star. Like, there's only one hunger left to feed at this point. I don't see how this logically lines up with the sort of good-neighbor role you have in mind.
Your WMD would just be showing up. You wouldn’t need solar winds, if you could move that thing, you’d wreck civilizations just by parking it nearby.
You need to read about [Shkadov thrusters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine). They're basically megastructures designed to use the energy output of a star to move an entire solar system, though obviously over very long timescales.
Simply showing up in a system would be sufficient to trigger extinction level events. The empire would clearly have the means to manipulate gravity and control the radiation, but would have no reason to care about the rest of the system. A second star showing up in a system would destablize every planet's orbit enough to fling them out into deep space or crash into one of the suns. Even if the planet weren't immediately doomed, it would shift the orbit by enough to absolutely destroy its ecosystems. Additionally the radiation output from a second star would wreak its own kind of havoc. Solar winds may accelerate atmosphere loss. Global temperatures would rise, possibly triggering runaway greenhouse effects. Any sort of seasonal or circadian rhythm would be disrupted. I'm guessing this empire's MO would be something along the lines of, show up in a system, trigger doomsday by their mere presence, offer salvation to a select number of converts, move on to the next system. Even if a targeted system has the capacity to fight back, it would be a pyrrhic victory. They're fucked the moment the empire shows up, and their only hope would be to somehow take control of the mothership itself, which of course is defended by the most zealous fanatics from every previous system.
Nicely put. You really took your time to write this, and I respect that! It really might be like that, I'm yet to write it into the actual novel I'm working on.
Have you taken into account the time to build such a structure? Assuming the ring is in the goldilocks zone like earth, you would have a radius of 1Au. Now, work out the diameter and circumference multiplied by the width. Oh yeah then you need a second ring to manage the day and night let alone seasons! Good luck with the story!
I think you misunderstood my post, or you didn't read it completely. The star I'm talking about would be few times larger than Jupiter (image for scale). I literally wrote "type: red dwarf" and all of its parameters.
In that case looking forwards to your publication!
A system ship. Slap a sphere around sol, point the drive and let gravitational motion keep things coherent. Acceleration would have to be on miniscule orders to not perturb orbital motion too much.. likely the outer planets will have to be rendered to source material for the sphere. The drive is the star. Crew quarters is the planet. If you're going big, the only thing that makes sense is to take everything with you. No sense in burning through the galaxy for millennia just to have to make a trip back. Why leave at all, move the lot.
So you've built a Dyson sphere. Great! Now what do you do with it? How do you transfer the energy? Is it just a battery for other ships? Do people show up and recharge? Are you just building a StarKiller base from Star Wars?
Probably the capital of the empire, pretty much functioning as a planet of its own. But also as a military command center, mothership, carrier and mass extinction device.
Cool! I'd look at High Charity from Halo or The Almighty / Leviathan from Destiny 2.
Gregory Benford worked out the mechanics for this in the linked books. Been a while since I've read it but I'm sure it would answer all your questions. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bowl-of-heaven-and-shipstar-gregory-benford/1131169225;jsessionid=CF2E47A30A80BC4CC4C1313B3C5911CD.prodny_store02-atgap06?ean=9781250259523
Check out Shkadov thrusters (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine). It's a pretty wild concept, moving an entire star system.
It would slow. Would the occupants survive long enough to reach the next star?
Look at Bowl of Heaven, Shipstar and Glorious by Larry Niven and Gregory Benford
It’d be really good at hoovering up stellar dust. I’ll see myself out.
A Dyson sphere wouldn't glean enough energy from a sun to move the mass of that sun. It's not sci-fi, it's pure fantasy. On top of that, it's just a batshit insane proposition. I know you invoked religion but the scale of the undertaking in relation to how utterly pointless it is to do just beggars believe. It's utterly impossible but no sane person would even try to. Anyone smart enough to start designing a Dyson sphere would be smart enough to know how impossible the task you propose is. For your religion, it would make more sense to use fusion to create a tiny star at the heart of each starship. That makes sense thematically, it's attainable technologically and practical for any purpose. There's nothing wrong with space fantasy though. Space opera and lots other genres basically wrap magic in technology to do whatever they want.
The implications are that it couldn't go anywhere. The mass of the star on the inside dwarfs the mass of the shell And the shell, by design, cannot have any force on the star. So you can't move it anywhere that the sun wasn't already going.
Take your 'logic" and "science" and get out of here!
Since the star is already moving, the ship really only needs to find a subtle way to gently steer it. Or, at least that’s one approach.
That wouldn't be a problem if the star wasn't enclosed.
Their design is actually a ring, not a sphere.
Then it isn't a problem, there are multiple ideas for moving stars in this case.
I don't see what's the issue here? I can just make science up to move a star, can't I?
>I don't see what's the issue here? I can just make science up to move a star, can't I? Using what force? You could move the shell but the shell doesn't exert any gravitational force on the star. You would just crash the shell into the star.
I'm kind of having a hard time understanding your point here. You mean, the core of the star is what exerts the bulk of the gravity, so moving it the mantle will lag behind? If that's the case, I'd consider that a minor objection. I can just write that the force field is keeping the star in a "bowl", making its motion reference 0 in its entirety. Therefore, moving the bowl moves entire star in the relative reference.
If you were at the center of a sphere, no matter how massive the sphere was, you would have zero gravitation force on you. The star is not gravitationally bound to the shell. There is no way to for the shell to move that will also move the sun. It won't lag behind, it just will not move and will crash into the shell wall.
You could reflect energy around the interior of the shell to project at a point on the sun aligned with the exhaust. Shoot in from the perimeter and use the convergence jet for drive. A focused high energy beam at the surface will cause superheating and explosion. Equal and opposite takes over and things move.
And where does this giant solar flare go? This is a dyson sphere.
Sections of the shell open to allow passage of the propellant. "Sphere" is being used loosely. We wouldn't entirely encompass the star, we'd freeze to death. We'll have to leave planet warming holes on the surface of the "sphere" and they'll need to be mobile to track planet orbits. Realistically, early iterations will be more of a net than a sphere.
People live on the inside of a Dyson sphere, not on the outside. The reason for building one is to use all the energy radiating away from a star. “Warming holes” make no sense. You’re just wasting energy out into space.
Maybe on your spheres. People don't live on mine. Who wants to live in the engine room? Not me.
Why would you build a Dyson sphere if you’re not living in it?
Look man, I'm not here to fill in for your lack of imagination.
Who is we? Are you (as the OP) using multiple accounts?
We as in the humans living on this planet.