Re: Surviving your star's red giant phase

: sigidunum@xxxxxxxxx
: Assume further no god-tech. Yes, I know
: that one man's god-tech is another's reasonable extrapolation of
: straightforward engineering. So let's say the aliens have a plausible
: late 21st century level of technology.

What stopped their singularity?

Anyhoo... I think you have to be more specific than
just "late 21st century", given the widely diverging opinions on just
how technology will change over the next few decades.

And I assume you mean they have a "late 21st century" technology,
but never progress further? This is the Slow Zone, or something?
After all, if you allow a million years to do the development, I would
think you could progress quite far beyond "late 21st century",
absent Zones or equivalent.

: Two obvious answers: (1) move the planet; (2) shade the planet.

My first prejudice would be that shading is the only viable short-term
solution, and moving the only longer-term solution. But I suppose that's
just a paraphrase of what you went on to say.

: Tens of thousands of momentum-adding asteroid flybys?

I'd think you'd need tens of millions, at the very least.
How much delta-v per flyby are you expecting?

I wonder... if you have a bazillion years, would a photon rocket be
your best bet? I dunno. It's sort of implied it would work in that
Niven about the lost starship and the frozen earth with the atmosphere
preciptated out. But I don't know as I'd depend on Niven for meticulous
treatment of megaengineering feats. Power the lasers with solar energy
from your sunshades... I have no idea if the arithmetic would work
out, though I suspect it wouldn't for an earth-sized sunshade, sigh.
Maybe they need to build a dyson sphere's worth of sunshades; then they'd
have enough power, prolly.


Wayne Throop throopw@xxxxxxxxx http://sheol.org/throopw
.