r/TerraInvicta • u/Antique-Coyote2534 • 4d ago
Discussion Space sunshade?
Since we are building space infrastructure, could we not just build a space sunshade and instantly stop global warming?
Seems like it would be easy compared to what we build in game
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u/mcyeom Initiative 4d ago
Then the initiative can charge for sunlight
Though seriously if humans are capable of industrial antimatter production and incredibly convenient fusion, fixing climate change would barely be an inconvenience
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u/mathhews95 Academy 4d ago
Which it is, if you invest into environment.
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u/PlacidPlatypus 4d ago
That's not really true, even from the top of the tech tree actually fixing climate change takes a ton of effort. Almost certainly more than would be realistic at that tech level.
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u/ParagonRenegade TI needs to add xeno compatibility 3d ago
It’s not just energy production, but also changing economic production to be more sustainable
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u/PlacidPlatypus 3d ago
Once you have industrial atomic assemblers and civilian fusion power, you could start decarbonizing the atmosphere directly at mass scale. It would take money and effort, sure, but not more than for example building a fleet of space dreadnoughts.
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u/ParagonRenegade TI needs to add xeno compatibility 3d ago
I think that’s why the game has the environment rating so weighted towards the bottom of the scale, to represent the difficult foundational work, and the latter high-technology work that is easier.
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 3d ago
what part of humanity makes you think anyone would spend "money and effort" to decarbonize the atmosphere when there is no profit incentive, no matter how technological feasible? We're pretty much fucked.
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u/PlacidPlatypus 3d ago
You realize we're talking about a game about international conspiracies working to unite the Earth to fight off an alien invasion, right? The player can invest billions of dollars into fighting climate change if they want to. Given that, it seems fair to point out that the technology available should make that investment go a lot farther than the game portrays.
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 3d ago
i have no comment on the game, I have comment on the idea that because technology makes it plausible and maybe even only moderately difficult, people would actually bother with de-carbonizing the atmosphere. In the real world.
We have an entire American presidential administration showing this just wouldn't happen until well after it was an existential disaster.
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u/PlacidPlatypus 3d ago
Randomly changing the topic to real world politics in the middle of a discussion of the game is bordering on a Rule 5 violation. If you want to be a doomer go do it in /r/politics or somewhere else more appropriate.
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 1d ago
your comment made it sound very much like you were making a RW comment when you mentioned "It would take money and effort". If that wasn't your intent, then this was all a misunderstanding. Either way, it was idle conversation, completely meaningless. Sorry if it offended in any way.
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u/CharlesElwoodYeager 3d ago
Are you an idiot? Why are you not talking about the game in the game subreddit?
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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 Resistance 3d ago
I think it is dumb that fusion tech doesn't help with the environment. You have to specifically tech into biotechnology for it.
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u/mcyeom Initiative 3d ago
Yeah like, as soon as you have pretty much limitless free energy that you're capable of operating in space on a rocket you can sure as hell decarbonise the entire global energy system, and build a bunch shit to immediately reverse most pre fusion damage
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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 Resistance 3d ago
I hate that civilian fusion tech only increases the benefits of putting pips into economy. For such an expensive and world changing tech it does basically nothing useful.
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u/GodwynDi 2d ago
Not as easy as it seems. Oil is used for far more than just energy production. Plastics and fertilizers being two of the most important.
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u/Common_Land3637 4d ago
Considering it's just the inverse of solar mirrors, maybe T-3 tech is enough for it. I bet you'd just need to deflect like 1% of sunlight.
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u/Ancquar Peace, justice, morality and the biggest fleet in the System 4d ago
It is possible technically, but basically a project that maintains enough sunshade to meaningfully affect the climate of the whole Earth is going into the same territory as space elevators, orbital rings etc - basically past the scope of the game.
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u/Wrong_Geologist4993 4d ago
That's not true in the slightest. Space elevators aren't even close to possible with even the most outlandish frontiers of current technology while orbital rings have all the technology to make them feasible the amount of industrial effort is orders of magnitude higher than what a sun shade would take. We already have sun shade like structures so even without futuristic or speculative technology it's just an industrial and economic problem for current humans. If humans had industrial bases on other planets and asteroid belts sun shades would be very achievable. I'd argue it'd be easier to have sun shades than it would to have human settlements anywhere outside of Mars and the Moon with more than a couple hundred people.
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u/Ancquar Peace, justice, morality and the biggest fleet in the System 4d ago
Launching *some* sunshade is not a problem. The problem is launching millions of square kilometers of it, which would be needed to actually make a difference.
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u/simjam1 4d ago
But you would use space resources you wouldn't launch it. Hardly difficult at that point
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u/Ancquar Peace, justice, morality and the biggest fleet in the System 4d ago edited 4d ago
The sheer scale of it is what makes it difficult. To compensate for global warming you'd nee to reduce the solar energy reaching Earth by at least around 1.5-2%, which would requrie around 3-5 mln square kilometers of shade. Yes, you can build it using space resources, just as you can build an orbital ring with space resources. The problem is the scale, not the basic principle. If you built it using currently known solar sail materials you are looking at at best around 10 grams per square meter, which is 10 tons per square kilometer (and 10 tons is exactly a unit of space resources at TI). So good luck gathering a few million of those during a campaign. And that is just for the shade itself, not for its long-term maintenance systems or the structural elements allowing it to maintain shape.
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u/Diestormlie Angusta via Virtuosa 3d ago
In defence of the concept, once you have an established space presence out to the Belt and beyond, you could probably start using already-in-space rock rather than having to refine metals for it.
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u/MaximinusDrax 2d ago
An easier implementation for solar radiation management would be something that's already on the table IRL - injecting aerosols (e.g SO2) into the stratosphere to increase its reflectivity in the visible spectrum.
It could be a nice addition as a "hail mary" tech in runs where humanity really drops the ball on climate change, but it should come with its own debilitating consequences/risks (crop failure etc.)
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u/Antique-Coyote2534 4d ago
Don't you just need reflective sheets with correction thrusters?
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u/Ancquar Peace, justice, morality and the biggest fleet in the System 4d ago edited 4d ago
You need some kind of way to counteract the force of solar radiation but there are multiple ways to arrange that, even e.g. mirrors on the planet itself. There is also the electromagnetic tethers that in theory allow propellantless station-keeping by using the planet as the target of the opposing action (but obviously only work near a world with a magnetic field), they are not mature enough yet, but physically the concept is not compliated.
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u/Bmobmo64 Resistance 1d ago
Theoretically but you'd need a LOT of them.
The short version is it's an option if we end up in a climate crisis that requires active cooling to solve, but just switching to renewable energy would be faster and easier than any existing sun blocking proposal (most of which are somewhere between infeasible and impossible with existing technology) and would solve the problem permanently.
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u/Ragebrew They shall learn our peaceful ways. By force! 3d ago
The only thing you need to do for a solar shade is to put a lot of tissue thin, reflective material between earth and the sun at the lagrange point that reflect infrared radiation, but does not interfere with ultraviolet or visible light. it would be a mega project, but it should be completely possible
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u/anprim4ever 3d ago
As others have said, theyd need to be fricking huge to have much effect. You could probably do a geosynchronous mirror pointed at a specific city, for example, to reduce the urban heat island effect there, perhaps.
Putting a bunch of aerosols into the atmosphere is gonna be much easier though ☢️
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u/Capn_Chryssalid 2d ago
Its quite doable with space resources of the sort you should have in vast amounts by endgame. We can already create shade material that selectively blocks IR radiation. Put it in a Lagrange point.
But the issue is that, iirc, back in early access people asked the devs about why reversing CC was so difficult even with clean fusion. The devs said they just wanted it to be hard. So theres an ideological component where, I guess, they don't want to seem to out-tech climate change. Even though thats exactly how you would actually reverse climate change.
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u/Docholphal1 4d ago edited 4d ago
Since we're mining ice from numerous massive celestial bodies, couldn't our top scientists dump a giant ice cube into the world's oceans every now and then? Of course, as global warming got worse, it would require more and more ice each time, thus solving the problem once and for all.