04-03-2021, 11:30 PM
Short on time atm, but a few things:
a) You could indeed use a grazer to both take stars apart fairly quickly and transport the material to wherever more or less 'instantly' (allowing for the limitations of OA's wormholes).
b) We should probably try to come to some consensus or math based numbers about just how much material you can actually get from taking stars apart and transmuting them via whatever means. Both in relation to this idea and on general principles.
c) The waste energy from the transmutation process and whatever else could be used for a variety of things, such as the creation of magmatter support structures (does this construct assume magmatter? I don't know that it could exist otherwise, but don't see a mention on details of tensile strength and such), and/or a Matrioshka swarm to absorb the energy and use it for computation, perhaps just temporarily (gives new meaning to the term 'flash drive'
). The swarm(s) might also run the project to some degree - or just run some simulations or sell processing cycles to others around the setting as a value add or the like.
d) Based on the way OA has historically described megaprojects, this project would take thousands of years to complete - which would spread the energy output out over a good bit of time instead of being a nova flash per se. Similarly, if the project is drawing on multiple locations for materials and such, that will also spread the waste energy out and reduce the intensity of any single given point.
e) I'm not sure how practical it is to actually have this whole thing moving through space - especially with grazers available. But if that is a thing that is really desired, there would need to be some reason provided for while such tech (as well as magmatter) isn't used.
Finally, and as previously mentioned - I think this works better as a work in progress or being in the design phase or the like rather then a finished project in Y11k. We tend to treat almost everything in the setting as a past event from the perspective of 10,600 AT and that is somewhat limiting and leaves a blank spot in terms of what things are like 'now' in the setting. Things like even bigger megastructures being created or contemplated can help fill that in a bit.
Ok - off to start the day.
Todd
a) You could indeed use a grazer to both take stars apart fairly quickly and transport the material to wherever more or less 'instantly' (allowing for the limitations of OA's wormholes).
b) We should probably try to come to some consensus or math based numbers about just how much material you can actually get from taking stars apart and transmuting them via whatever means. Both in relation to this idea and on general principles.
c) The waste energy from the transmutation process and whatever else could be used for a variety of things, such as the creation of magmatter support structures (does this construct assume magmatter? I don't know that it could exist otherwise, but don't see a mention on details of tensile strength and such), and/or a Matrioshka swarm to absorb the energy and use it for computation, perhaps just temporarily (gives new meaning to the term 'flash drive'
). The swarm(s) might also run the project to some degree - or just run some simulations or sell processing cycles to others around the setting as a value add or the like.d) Based on the way OA has historically described megaprojects, this project would take thousands of years to complete - which would spread the energy output out over a good bit of time instead of being a nova flash per se. Similarly, if the project is drawing on multiple locations for materials and such, that will also spread the waste energy out and reduce the intensity of any single given point.
e) I'm not sure how practical it is to actually have this whole thing moving through space - especially with grazers available. But if that is a thing that is really desired, there would need to be some reason provided for while such tech (as well as magmatter) isn't used.
Finally, and as previously mentioned - I think this works better as a work in progress or being in the design phase or the like rather then a finished project in Y11k. We tend to treat almost everything in the setting as a past event from the perspective of 10,600 AT and that is somewhat limiting and leaves a blank spot in terms of what things are like 'now' in the setting. Things like even bigger megastructures being created or contemplated can help fill that in a bit.
Ok - off to start the day.
Todd