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Comment by granitepail | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but feel as though this article was a massive waste of time. I know it's certainly not the point of the article to be thorough, but the claims are all utterly baseless and not even remotely applicable to... anything.

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It's a Fermi problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

An absurdly whimsical and fairly basic Fermi problem, but, hey, why should physicists and engineers hog all the fun?

As for the practical applications of this problem: Any game which a) encourages people to estimate costs in terms of percentage of GDP and b) makes the point that GDP per capita tends to grow over time is a useful educational gambit.

It's also a Kardashev problem, and a BDO, and kind of like Ringworld.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dumb_Object

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

/me hurriedly turns noprocrast back on

Good idea. As a civilization, we're a bit behind on the big stuff. Personally, I'm starting NUBE: Nerds United for a Better Earth. We'll use nanotech to turn this planet into a death star, thereby mooting all of that space-related effort. Why build ships when we can just make the planet go?

How do you plan on heating the planet and protecting it from space debris?

Let's just borrow a chapter from Ringworld, and move the Sun, dragging the Earth along. I don't have enough napkins for a calculation, but it may be possible to just trail the star as it clears debris ahead of us, while also keeping us warm. (Naturally, the exhaust would have to be redirected around Earth - I don't know if it would be easier to build something around the sun to do this, or to place a shield around the planet.)

How should I know any of that? I'm still busy designing NUBE's logo! Although, if we were to have lunch at a place which was cognizant enough of our needs to provide copious napkins, I would guess that one way to accomplish the goals of which you speak, would be to accrete, around the Earth, a solid shell consisting of asteroids, with plenty of space between the planet and the shell. The planet's surface would be heated due to a combination of the heat which escapes the core, and through the use of nuclear energy, in some fashion, because both of those sources would be trapped by the shell. The shell would obviously protect from space debris, and less obviously, due to its thickness and density, it would protect from the radiation likely to be encountered in deep space.

AsteroidShell = 3For1Deal!

If you live in NYC, I'd actually be glad to meet you for lunch.

But we MUST discuss this idea, using only napkins for paper.

I live in Philadelphia, PA.

http://idea-sandbox.com/blog/2007/11/cocktail-napkin-noteboo...

Dang, well, let me know if you come up here :P

I think it's an interesting point. World GDP has increased 200x in 500 years. That makes a lot of things possible that would've been fantasy back then, even accounting for technology.

Author could've wasted some hour on it. Doesn't matter. What matters is that it is on the front page of HN and will probably accumulate dozens of wasted hours from people reading this. This has to be the most pointless thing I've ever seen here.

But maybe I just don't get something about it.

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