[HN Gopher] Mercurial Dyson - a plan for the disassembly of plan...
___________________________________________________________________
Mercurial Dyson - a plan for the disassembly of planet Mercury
Author : indy
Score : 47 points
Date : 2026-04-03 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| LoganDark wrote:
| I am such a sucker for technical Aspie writing. I've seen it
| mistaken for LLM output many times but this is not that.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| its not? how can you tell?
| r-w wrote:
| > The shell is not merely a strength structure; it is a fixed
| logistics skeleton.
| jmount wrote:
| I encourage Dyson sphere enthusiasts to listen to the interesting
| argument that Dyson spheres they may be deliberately designed as
| an "sounds neat but is impossible" filter joke, ref:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM .
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Sped through that, couldn't stomach the whole thing. Is there
| more to it than "argument by sneering dismissal"? (Basically,
| so far as I can tell, her point seems to be "this was intended
| as a joke to see if you're stupid, so if you believe it, you
| are, neener-neener!")
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Somehow I new before clicking that it was going to be Angela.
|
| Two years ago: AI does not exist but it will ruin everything
| anyway
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUrOxh_0leE
| uticus wrote:
| > The shell is not merely a strength structure; it is a fixed
| logistics skeleton. Its purpose is to provide: dense distributed
| launch/capture corridors large-scale routing geometry attachment
| points for high-temperature radiator fields buffering volume for
| material and coolant traffic alignment and vibration-control
| structure for the mature transport system...
|
| Roger that
| ossicones wrote:
| Stuff like this is why I read HN
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Does Mercury not have any useful radioactive material to provide
| more power?
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I guess it might. I wouldn't plan on it without a very detailed
| survey though, to say the least. Whereas solar is definitely
| right there. (And you still have to worry about cooling either
| way.)
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Are there reactor designs that could work up there? There's not
| much water for coolant.
| ethmarks wrote:
| There are other substances that can be used for reactor
| coolant. Molten salt reactors are actually substantially more
| efficient than water-cooled reactors because they have a
| higher operating temperature. You can also use liquid metal
| as coolant, such as lead or bismuth.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > The mirror fleet does not increase the total power available to
| the project; Mercury still intercepts only a fixed amount of
| sunlight.
|
| I think I must be missing something important, because this
| doesn't make sense to me. If you put your mirrors in orbits where
| they don't block the dayside surface (sun-synchronous?), then
| they increase the total surface area receiving solar radiation.
| Stefan-H wrote:
| Yeah, orbital mirrors essentially expand the radius of Mercury,
| increasing the sunlight available. Terrestrial mirrors would
| ensure that light makes it from the sunward side to the dark
| side of the planet.
| restalis wrote:
| Also, the kind of satellites that aren't much more than
| mirrors, even with today's knowledge, they can be designed to
| change their profile/surface and thus reduce the absorption
| of the incident radiation, if they'd had to cross the space
| between the sun and the sunlight collector areas.
| nacozarina wrote:
| this seems to ignore the fact that Mercury is way too deep in
| Sol's gravity well to be useful, all it's looking at is Mercury
| mass.
| Stefan-H wrote:
| Why does being so deep in the gravity well pose an issue? If
| you are assuming the Dyson swarm is intended to go back up the
| well then sure, but that isn't necessary.
| ethmarks wrote:
| Could you elaborate? Why would being deep in the gravity well
| be a non-starter? I thought Mercury's proximity to Sol was a
| huge advantage because of the ample solar power which would
| make planet-side manufacturing easier.
| choilive wrote:
| Bootstrapping an electronics supply chain on another planet seems
| harder than building the dyson swarm itself.
| asdff wrote:
| Just let Claude figure it out
| pndy wrote:
| What about orbital mechanics? Wouldn't that create issues
| with/for objects in the solar system?
| alhazrod wrote:
| Please someone, send grey goo to Mercury.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Reading the "endgame" section, and I feel that some serious
| thought ahould be given to what the replicator colony will do
| after it has finished dismantling Mercury.
| baddash wrote:
| 1-6 years can't be realistic can it? does someone have a better
| estimate of how long this would take?
| lorenzohess wrote:
| 50-100 years default, 25-50 with Plan Mode, and down to ~10 if
| you use Opus 4.6 Max
| rafterydj wrote:
| This reads like an LLM plagiarizing this video from Kurzgesagt:
|
| https://youtu.be/pP44EPBMb8A?si=fSwWPOCnCsC1QEny
| ethmarks wrote:
| Kurzgesagt didn't invent the concept of disassembling Mercury
| to build a Dyson swarm. Stuart Armstrong proposed it in a
| lecture in 2012[0].
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/zQTfuI-9jIo?si=3jwmhoB7zx6rclhb
| 0xf00ff00f wrote:
| Pretty sure the idea predates that lecture, it appears in
| Charles Stross' novel Accelerando from 2005 (which is based
| on short stories that were published years earlier).
| thot_experiment wrote:
| If someone can't be bothered to write it I can't be bothered to
| read it.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| "Shellworlds". With just two shells. As described in his books by
| Iain M. Banks.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-03 23:02 UTC)