Spheres

Greetings to all, the following story was inspired by the digital art of @xpilar, I invite you to visit his blog. The picture that motivated this story is the following.

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Source

Spheres

It was not the first or would be the last sphere built by the corporation, the experience in this field was already wide, but it would not be the same as the others, for the first time it would try to take advantage of the energy of a white type A star, which also had as a companion a white dwarf, reason why the sphere would be exposed to an intense gravitational pull. This was, by far, the biggest engineering challenge ever faced by the corporation.

Michael Chen was in charge of the operations, in addition to being the main architect of the project, and director of the design team of the new absorption modules. For more than eight hundred years, he had been in charge of the Dyson spheres engineering division of the corporation and had directed the construction of these in fifty different locations.

Actually, the process of managing a fleet of robots was not really complicated, there were algorithms that were directly responsible for doing what they were supposed to do, their job was basically to define the resources that should be dedicated to each project, where they could be obtained and what would be the best strategy to obtain them.

The construction of a sphere requires the exploitation of planets or asteroids, from which to extract massively its mineral resources, to be processed in space factories; In many cases, large asteroids must be towed directly to the factories to be exploited. The planning of this whole operation was Michael's work.

The design regularly used for the construction of Dyson spheres, consists of several modules that orbit synchronously around a star trapping its radiation and transforming it into directed emissions of high-energy electromagnetic waves that are received by energy stations on planets, space stations and ships for its use. In short, the spheres allow most of the energy radiated by the star to be used, which would otherwise be lost in space.

The density of modules around the star determines the amount of radiation that would be used. To date only spheres around stable red dwarfs and some orange dwarfs have been built, achieving in the former a percentage of use of seventy percent and in the latter of fifty percent.

During the manufacture of the sphere, one by one the absorption modules were transported by the robot ships, it was a specially created design for this particular project, generally these modules had a flat face, provided with the absorption cells , which is oriented towards the star; but in this case, the modules would have a sphere shape, with all its surface covered with cells, and would rotate on its axis, exposing each cell for less time to the radiation of the star, but maintaining a continuous absorption of energy.

The robot ships transported each module on its deck and once in the position where it would be placed, it was given the angular impulse to initiate its rotational movement. It will require the continuous work of more than three million ships, for 100 years, to cover only twenty percent of the surface of the star, but with the fraction of energy perceived by this number of modules, it would be enough to satisfy the requirements of more than two hundred worlds and about ten thousand space stations, which are within a radius of twenty light years, from the star.

The trip from the headquarters of the corporation to the construction site had taken about three months, during which the ship had to cross five bridges. Michael was impatient to get to see how the operations were carried out, it would be the first time in a long time that he would be in the place of the works; the occasion warranted it, it was the first construction of its kind and also the first one that was mostly his creation.

The ship was docked to the port of a giant factory about five hundred kilometers in diameter that was in orbit around the star, when looking out the hatch Michael could see how an asteroid almost as big as the same factory was attached to it and was mined by robots, which gave off large pieces of rock that were transported inside.

Already inside the factory, Michael made a tour in the company of the scarce twelve engineers who were in charge of the operation, inspected the factory of the absorption modules, where they were assembled a hundred every ten minutes, the rate at which they worked. robots was amazing, more than two thousand formed the assembly line, and another eight hundred were in charge of the maintenance of the first ones.

In another sector was the exploitation of the asteroid that Michael had seen before. Large rocks were towed from the rubble belt that surrounded the orbiting star, between her and her white dwarf companion. The pieces of rock detached by the mining robots were crushed and then processed to extract the silica and metals that would be used in the manufacture of the modules, every day an asteroid like the one that was now anchored, was processed and the remaining material was compacted and left again in the rubble belt.

This would be the first factory of this type that Michael would visit on his trip, his tour of the operation would last two years and then return to the headquarters of the corporation, his visit would take him to fifty other factories of the two thousand that were operating in the closeness of the star.

Text of @amart29 and digital art of @xpilar, March 2019

I can only thank @xpilar for allowing me to use his digital art in my publication and for motivating my creation. Thank you very much @xpilar

Thank you all for visiting my publication, I hope your comments and I appreciate your support, until next time

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://materia-oscura.mipropia.com/2019/03/18/spheres/

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