Viability of a Dyson Swarm as a Form of Dyson Sphere

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the feasibility of a Dyson Swarm around Mars as a sustainable energy source for Earth, analyzing design, construction, efficiency, and potential impacts on space exploration and civilization.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of a Mars-based Dyson Swarm as a practical alternative to a solid Dyson Sphere, with detailed engineering and feasibility analysis.

Findings

A Dyson Swarm could meet Earth's 2019 power needs within 50 years.

Construction involves over 5.5 billion satellites launched from Mars.

Efficiency ranges from 0.74% to 2.77% of the Sun's output.

Abstract

First conceptualised in Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel 'Star Maker', before being popularised by Freeman Dyson in the 1960s, Dyson Spheres are structures which surround a civilisation's sun to collect all the energy it radiates. Through discussion of the features of such a feat of engineering, the viability, scale and likely design of a Dyson structure is evaluated, before details about each stage of its construction and operation are investigated. It is found that a Dyson Swarm, a large array of individual satellites orbiting another planetary body, is the ideal design for such a structure over the solid sun-surrounding structure which is typically associated with the Dyson Sphere. In our solar system, such a structure based around Mars would be able to account for the Earth's 2019 global power consumption of 18.35 TW within fifty years once its construction has begun, which itself could start by 2040. The swarm of over 5.5 billion satellites would be constructed on the surface of Mars before being launched by electromagnetic accelerators into a Martian orbit. Efficiency of the Dyson Swarm ranges from around 0.74 - 2.77% of the Sun's $3.85\times10^{26}$ W output, with large potential for growth as both current technologies improve and future concepts are brought to reality in the time before and during the swarm's construction. Not only would a Dyson Swarm provide a near infinite, renewable power source for Earth, it would allow for significant expansions in human space exploration and for our civilisation as a whole.