The Dyson Swarm

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A Dyson swarm is an extremely large group of satellites or space stations orbiting a star to absorb its light and use its energy for power. To be classified as a Dyson Swarm, at least one percent of a star's energy must be caught by solar panels. The Dyson Swarm refers the Sun, and its growing swarm of habitats. The Solar System currently uses roughly .02% of the Sun's energy, with approximately 1.4 billion square kilometers of solar panels. This level puts humanity just over the planet-class on The Revised Kardashev Scale, with about ten times the theoretical maximum population of earth. With the Human's rapid expansion and growth rate, it is predicted that humanity will become a fully-fledged planetary class civilization in 690, with a population equal to the theoretical maximum of Earth, the Moon, and its surrounding space. This is a level five on The Revised Kardashev Scale, which gives a ranking based on the theoretical minimum territory a civilization could fit into.

Progress towards a full dyson swarm is, of course, slow. To achieve a full swarm opens humanity up to becoming a level seven civilization, with a maximum of 5*10²⁵ inhabitants (fifty septillion). Current models predict that humans will reach level six before 1000, and level seven sometime in the next millennium. Before humanity can completely fill the Solar System, it will likely colonize and inhabit several other star systems. Many analysts predict that a civilization in fact can't reach a level higher than seven, as the gulf between stars may prevent civilizations from maintaining their unity.

The Solar System's Dyson swarm has expanded exponentially since the War of Stars, and the planet Mercury is being completely industrialized, creating thousands of square kilometers of solar panels every day, feeding humanities growing need for energy. Most of this energy is used in the transit lasers that today fuel transport throughout the Solar System, pushing massive spaceliners out towards Jupiter, Neptune, the Oort cloud, and other star systems. It is predicted that the Solar System will have a full dyson swarm by 730.

Type

Megalopolis

Population

Five point eight trillion

Inhabitant Demonym

Human

Owning Organization

Interplanetary Governance Council