Awe-Inspiring Sci-Fi Megastructures, and Why They're so Cool.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2024
- Spacedock delves into mighty megastructures across science fiction.
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I want a civilization so advanced; they can build mega structures then abandon them to mess with the next less advanced civilization that comes along.
Edit: I should have clarified that the structures would have no use except to bait the lesser civilizations to spend uncountable time to uncover what great purpose they had. No one would build something so grand for nothing, after all.
Space is huge. We barely scratched the surface. Perhaps those structures do exist.
There was a scifi book I read decades ago that had a race so advanced that everything they did seemed like magic. The main character was in a academy learning to become a Forger of Stars. Basically someone that would design stars and planets complete with life and so on. The most predominate ones created whole galaxies.
For the life of me I can't remember the name (it wasn't all that good as a story but the concepts were amazing)
This is almost mass effect
Such civilizations existed in Star Trek. Or Mass Effect. Or Ark Survival Evolved. The Dyson Sphere episode in TNG or The Chase in TNG 6x20, which got a follow up in ST: Discovery season 5. The Citadel in Mass Effect has a similar effect as the Reapers end civilizations and renew them through the CItadel. In Ark Survival you start of as a lowly human trying to survive on a mega structure as a experiment by aliens to see which species has the most potential. One could even see the book of Genesis from the bible as such a civilization, represented by God and the Devil. Just to mess with Adam, and Eve, and humankind.
Truly that is some next-level trolling.
Somewhere Isaac Arthur is seeing this and going: "hello brother"
I suspect a comment from him will be pinned in the comments soon(ish)
I love that guy
Serious I actually LOL'd
@isaacarthurSFIA you seeing this?
Deploying drink and snack
Do you think people living on an Alderon Disk would have a "Round Earth Theory?
Depending on the tech level of the inhabitants, maybe. If there are countless lower-tech civilizations occupying it and treating the structure as merely a natural formation or more likely, the product of some kind of divine entities, they would assume that the giant flat world is just the way of things and the stars in the night sky just don't have their own (if and when they advance enough to see stars that close), which might also add to the sense that they are special and chosen by their gods.
As for higher-tech civilizations, they would know that other stars might have planets around them and if they haven't realized already, figure out that their own system is pretty special and the result of a much more advanced past civilization or power. They might place less of a religious significance on the nature of their system compared to others, but still might have a sense of superiority seeing that they got to live on such a massive area compared to other/alien civilizations who have to make do with comparatively miniscule spherical worlds.
As for the inhabitants having the theory itself, it would depend if they have cultural myths including their ancestors originating on a round planet and being transported to the discord whatever reason.
@@fadelsukoco3092 It would also depend on whether they can go below the surface, and what they'd find there. In Treasure Planet, they thought it was just a regular planet until they were able to go below the surface and see the machinery. Similarly, what the Disk is made of would change how easily they can find out their world is artificial. They should be able to find out, unless the Disk needs no regulating systems to keep its position relative to the star.
I think another good question is, how would you go between the sides of the Disk? Especially if you can't just go through.
@@tvrkm6897 I don't think there's any practical reason you shouldn't be able to go through, although gravity would be wonky.
@@tvrkm6897 It could be the case that the various cultures living on either side of the disc don't actually know that there are any other people on their respective opposite sides, not until one of then starts a space program and starts putting probes and debris in space that might drift to the telescope or sensor range of the other side.
Well the have that in discworld. But that is high fantasy and syterical.
Honestly Stellaris with the Gigastructural Engineering Mod especially paired with the Ancient Cache Of Technologies mod and their sub mods.
Have the Absolute best use of Megastructures in gaming. From having ancient space empire literally throw weaponized Planets and Moons at each other.
To Being able to build Planets capable of housing the entire population of a galaxy.
To having to fight off technological forces of nature that use star sized warships to systematically eat entire galaxies.
Kyubey coming in to mess up the galaxy with Blokks.
I keep coming back to the idea of a set of three Alderson Disk systems spread across the galaxy at roughly equal points called "The Three Crowns", or even a mod to spawn them in at the start of a game, but by the time I get to that point the galaxy is already too built up as it is, and I don't know how to make mods at all, respectively
Although watching this it did give me an idea of how to differentiate them
The Jade/Emerald Crown for the Gaia disk
The Ruby/Topaz/Amber Crown for the Computational disk
And the Onyx Crown for the Ecumenopolis disk
And the slices would be "First Onyx/Emerald/Topaz Jewel" and so on
Now if only I didn't accidentally wipe my modlist and could get Stellaris working without checking each and every mod individually...
Gigastructural Engineering is how I found out about Birch Worlds, boy talk about something that can even make Dyson Spheres look diminutive…
@@dagdamor1 My favorate is the "The Gargantuan Quasarcraft" submod.
It's a Warship that has the Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole at its core It's bigger than a solar sistem. (Likely over a light year across)
And uses other Celestial Warships (The weaponized Planets and Moons) as Strike Craft.
It's so utterly absurd all I can do is laugh maniacally.
@vi6ddarkking whenever I play with that thing, I have to go in its files and change the defines because it keeps killing itself after overflowing its hull points and damage. Also had to reassign its weapons values as well. A hassle but it's so funny to have late game.
"Blame!" Has such a fantastic world, like, in one chapter you just get told there's an empty chamber the main character is walking across that is where The Builders built around Jupiter before devouring it to continue building the City. The entire solar system encased in a city that is being explored ON FOOT over huge amounts of time is just phenomenal. It's also a perfect example of a recovered society within a post-apocalypse, where the people who actually created the Builders and gave them their commands, have over generations of cross-breeding with humans who didn't have the special genetic flag, have lost any capability to control the structure their ancestors started building. Entire new life forms having evolved on their own paths, the silicon based lifeforms that evolved on their own via technological refinement into vastly different beings who almost don't know why they hate humans only that they do.
I love Blame!, it's so, so good.
For many people there's a point where giant things become ridiculous instead of cool, not me tho. I love it when all sense of realism get's thrown out the window and you end up with Hive Cities that double as space elevators, planet sized motherships, Dyson spheres that are actually 1AU in diameter, or beings so vast they could use earth as a bowling ball.
I guess you could call it Megalophilia lol
Get therapy.
youll love "Sarcophagus" from Halo
you don't need to throw all sense of realism to not having a point where giant things become ridiculous, there's one structure that even the biggest galaxies pale in comparison, the xelee disk
BLAME!'s megastructure is so cool to me. I love the endless tight cavers and mind bending large empty areas all thrown together into one "thing".
It's def the most mega mega structure, translates that depthcore/metalheart vibe perfectly into architecture.
I believe in the lore of it, the megastructure is so insanely big it engulfed Earth and reaches all the way out to Jupiter's orbit.
@@Corgblam The habitable part goes up to Jupiter, the rest of it goes all the way to the Oort cloud IIRC
Seeing a content creator just waffle about something they love brings tears of joy to my four eyes
Your glasses contain water?
Sort of related to the whole "forgotten facility with weird unknown machinery," the Portal franchise has always given me that feeling, mostly in Portal 2 but also in the original. Worming through dark and dense industrial machinery, climbing a seemingly endless maintenance shaft, wandering through cavernous rooms with structures so massive you can't see the ceiling, or navigating vertigo-inducing catwalks with endless pits sandwiched between massive flat walls covered in machinery. It both intrigued and scared me as a kid; I was constantly afraid of getting lost in the seemingly endless forgotten parts of the facility, even though I now know that's just not how the levels are designed.
The first time I ever saw a Dyson Sphere was Star Trek Online (hadn't watched the shows prior to playing, sue me) and I was instantly struck with awe.
The main base for Dyson Command being the humongous planet-sized arch, the Iconian portal gate that looks big enough to swallow a dwarf moon or an extra large meteor, the massive megastructure in the Voth Combat Zone that has a massive city at the base. I was instantly captivated.
An entire station to harness the power of the sun, capable of holding trillions, maybe even QUADRILLIONS, of people on it's surface. It dwarfed everything I had ever seen in sci-fi at that point, it was incredible.
I had stopped playing STO for a while ,but when they announced the Dyson Sphere, I decided to come back to check it out (and stuck around, though I am not that active).
I once had an idea of writing a steampunk-esk ringworld were Aliens abducted races and gave them the "return to home" portal on the other side.
Had to drop the idea when I realized it would take a 300km/h non-stop train a full century to reach the other side.
Mabye can do that with a moon or so, but then the most important thing - the ringworld - would not be there.
Nicholl-Dyson beams: for when a Death Star isnt powerful enough
And one megastructure I need to mention just because it's fun but underrepresented is the Topopolis. Basically take an Oneil Cylinder, and make it long. Really long. So long it can bend over distance without messing up the rotation. The most simple illustration would be to build it in a circle about the circumference of earths orbit around the sun and making the interior into a river valley over 90 million miles long.
Somonee likes the Bobiverse lol😂
You're building a tiny topopolis there. I wouldn't want to live THAT close to the Sun! (You forgot to use the circumference, not the radius of Earth's orbit.)
Earth's orbital radius is about 150 m km and the topopolis would be 2 times pi times that radius, ~942,500,000 km long or 585.6 million miles.
Topopolis - The Endless River.
I've heard of Dyson spheres and rings, but never a disk. Learning new stuff every day
UC Gundam had Grey Vivariums (Basically bigger Bernels/similar to B5) as well as the Island 3s. It also had the Solar System giant mirror arrays.
That's amazing.
Star Wars Legends **does** have a “mythical lost to the ages” megastructure in Centerpoint station, a space station capable of throwing and shifting entire star Systems around
That, and the Rakatan Star Forge from Knights of the Old Republic.
Depending on your definition, You could argue that both the Correllian System and The Maw also qualify
Your joke about artificial gravity really makes me want to see you do a video on artificial gravity tech and ways it could be used outside of just gravity plates
are there any scifi that use "graviton" to handwave gravitational manipulation explanation?
Read the (completed) webcomic Shlock Mercenary for a plethora of uses for gravity manipulation!
Innertia dampening.
I'm certain that same tech would insure you don't become a blood splat on the wall after a sudden stop.
Traveller's Third Imperium setting does a good job utilizing its ubiquitous gravity manipulation technology. In a sense gravity manipulation is the settings "one big lie," because it underpins almost all the other handwavy space opera technology. It is used for ship artificial gravity, counter-gravity "hover" vehicles (which aren't arbitrarily restricted to hovering only a few feet above the ground, an Air Raft, roughly equivalent to a star wars speeder, can make low orbit if the crew have space suits, and grav tanks behave more like supersonic fighter helicopter hybrids than traditional armored vehicles), spacecraft reactionless engines, the settings faster than light drive, inertial dampening, and the super efficient micro fusion reactors that power everything. Its even possible to find extremely heavy weapons that use countergravity to reduce their weight so a normal human can carry them.
@@alamrasyidi4097there is the spiral wars books where artificial gravity is a thing, but it has its own quirks and is a hyper-advanced lost technology that counts as impossibe by most scientists. On the other hand, repulsor-lift technology is commonplace but nobody really knows how it was developed, because of its brain-bending weirdness.
Also, the way carriers work in the setting is metal as fuck
The space station Crescentia from Treasure Planet is definitely one that i loved; shaped like a crescent moon it orbits the planet Montressor where the story starts. The scene where the perspective moves towards it always makes me appreciate how they could build something so grand.
Would you rather have antimatter or antigravity in a scifi story?
Would you rather live on a space station or alien planet?
Centerpoint station could be considered an ancient mega structure in star wars. It was built by the ancient Force entities.
You mean the Celestials
@@stubbornspaceman7201 yeah. Their name slipped my mind earlier.
I love watching Kurzgesagt's videos to get ideas for some crazy sci-fi superstructure.
From blackhole bombs to Dyson swarms to stellar engines!
I'm suprised the blackhole bomb hasn't been used much (if at all) in sci-fi. It's basically an artificial supernova that, given a few hundred years, can decimate an entire region of space! An interstellar wasteland devoid of life.
i feel like most of space is already wasteland devoid of life
Black hole bomb is basically the plot of Farscape, especially the Peacekeeper Wars finale.
Isaac Arthur's Channel has a lot of good videos on Megastructures. Whole playlist worth. Also a playlist on the uses of blackholes.
It's in Stellaris Gigastructures, but you'd never use it as a bomb anyway, more like an energy generator and ring world since it's almost never ever built in enemy territory.
@@earnestbrown6524 Yeah and a 2 HOUR video just describing various megastructures and concepts relating to them.
Man the vex make so many magastructures out of planets and stars, from mercury being converted to a giant simulator to the planetoid nessus being used for a local archival storage. Even them using a Giant Blue star as a forge, and since they siphon all the heaver elements for their construction the star is able to live long past its lifespan since it doesn't have the heavy elements to slow down its reactions. the whisper mission is so cool as you are exploreing the taken bowls of a machine world.
You can have fun with megastructures. Among one of the concepts I considered was a more realistic probability of a megastructure such as a star fortress (It's almost like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, but more of a set of rings). These are essentially a Dyson ring. The issue with Dyson's Spheres is that the tidal flexing generated by medium to larger stars can possibly rip and damage the structures (Essentially, rings are better than spheres). One possible concept, however, is to use smaller, stable Red Dwarf stars (that generate less heat/radiation). These stars would not reach the point of melting alloys such as tungsten and would be less resource-intensive to make. The space stations would essentially use the stars as a furnace to power up numerous weapons and foundries. The durable alloys can allow the station to withstand heavy assaults from enemy fleets.
In my stories, this required the alien race to strip almost the entire red dwarf system in order to make it, and it would take almost 6,000 years to complete the construction of one station. It was always considered controversial as it required large amounts of resources to create, but it was also argued that these fortresses were almost unbeatable, being able to wipe out large swaths of enemy fleets while serving as a place to help construct ships safely from enemy assault. It was also argued that Red Dwarf stars would outlast any other star in existence, thus being the perfect place to set up a base.
The bobaverse books have some cool megastructures in them. Fun books overall
3:19 "Generated artificial gravity is just so last year darling." 🤣🤣
The Homeworld setting is absolutely full of the wreckage of these.
Homeworld 1 is one of my all time favourite sci-fi settings as well as story ❤
John Ringo's "Live Free or Die" (and the books that follow) have mega-structures that are quite interesting.
From the swarm of solar collectors that get used to melt asteroids or combine to be a high-energy weapon system, to the melted-and-inflated iron asteroids that become (slowly) mobile battle stations.
And to go to his engine video, those asteroid fortresses were moved by the nuclear pulse drive. I seriously LOL'd when I read the aliens' reaction to it moving, "They are using WHAT?"
@@wolfdeltanine and "what the hell did we just get hit with?!"
I wait and will keep waiting, for more in the series.
Any shout out to the Culture Books deserves all the likes!
There are some _genuine_ megastructures in pre-Disney Star Wars. Centrepoint Station in the Corellian system for one (and, looked at another way, the entire system itself, since none of the worlds were originally from there).
There's also Iokath which is literally a shell world.
One ironic thing about living on a ringworld is that since they are rigid and locked into facing the sun, there needs to be giant shutters to create day night cycles, which means that there are no stars at night. Which is kind of depressing in a weird way when you think about it: you are on a megastructure that only the most advanced civilization can build, yet you can't see stars at night - something the most primitive cultures get to enjoy every night...
Maybe you can make the ringworlds flexible like a mobius strip, or completely double sided and twisting to create a more natural day night cycle
Speaking of, the Stellaris Gigastructural Engineering mod's Alderson disc are also only single sided, you'd think with that kind of thickness they would also be double sided as well
In fairness, I can't see the stars at night here today.
The shutters only have to block out the sun. Any stars not right next to the sun would be visible
One way around that is to make the ring not actually surround the star that it is orbiting. Instead, it could be built offset from the star. That would allow the spin of the ring to keep half of the inner surface within it's own shadow. Rotation of the ring would allow for a moving day/night line.
Have you read Niven's Ringworld books? His concept uses a constellation of 'shadow squares' in an orbit between the sun and the ringworld to block out the sun and provide a day/night cycle while still allowing you to see the stars
In my mind, Necron Tomb Worlds from 40k are megastructures
The Krell's device in The Forbidden Planet is such an awesome plot device and mega structure.
The biggest one I can think of is Bolder's Ring. It has the combined mass of a huge galaxy, but it's been deconstructed into compact rotating ring of cosmic strings (hypothetical 2D objects with immense energy). The ring itself is 10 million lightyears across. Their rotation is near the speed of light and keeps the ring stable and from collapsing and the center of mass basically formed a naked singularity: a black hole without an event horizon. The singularity has essentially been forced into a portal that leads to other possible space-time configurations; it's a portal to other universes. There's a nice little tie-in with present day; we refer to this gravitational anomaly as the Great Attractor. The only reason why the GA is so mysterious to us is because it's on the other side of the Milky Way so we can't really see what it is. Is it a single monstrous galaxy? A compact cluster of galaxies? Either way, it's influencing the motion of galaxies millions and millions of lightyears around it.
And the coolest thing about Bolder's Ring is that it's an /escape route/. It really puts into scale just how massive the Photino Birds' terraformation project is, that the Xeelee, who can build something like Bolder's Ring, had to give up and just try an escape.
Also fun fact, irl the Great Attractor is probably just a location with a lot of Galaxies. Specifically, it's likely the Norma Wall (a giant string of Galaxies), with a particular central part being the Norma Cluster, a galaxy cluster with not only many galaxies, but many massive galaxies to boot.
The Mata Nui Robot from Bionicle really prompts a sense of awe, even if its scale is truly ridiculous.
And it's not like a conventional colony ship, its Matoran occupants aren't passengers, they're the robot's "cells" whose work keeps it running, they're just scaled up to macro scale.
Kinda surprised there was no mention of the Magog WorldShip from Andromeda.
They got ignored before when this channel did a video on huge ships too.
I do love ringworlds.
Though flashing the novel Ringworld up for an example of planet-sized rings seemed unfair, as the titular structure fills a planetary ORBIT.
this whole video feels like a stellaris commercial!
If you're interested in this topic, Isaac Arthur has an excellent video on it: "The Megastructure Compendium". It does a brief overview of many different structures, from the city-scale to the system-scale, as well as many of the core principles behind them. Can't recommend it enough.
One of my favorite book series, Andromeda Dark, dealt with all kinds of megascale engineering. It was the first place I'd heard of an Alderson Disc.
Same novel also had an interesting kind of 'spaghetti' construct that was literally thousands of giant O'Neil cylinders linked together in a daisy chain that lopped and looped around a star until it looked like a fuzzball. When you got close enough you realized that each segment was it's own habitat that turned on its own. At a distance the angles seemed extreme but up close the difference in angles between units was miniscule: it just was way more obvious when you were like, half a lightyear away.
The coolest megastructures are Bank’s Orbitals from the Culture. “Small” ringworlds of such a diameter that a rotational period of one day produces one G of centripetal force, that orbit a star at a slight angle so that a day-night cycle exists. On the edges are retaining walls to keep the atmosphere inside, and on the outside rim is various support infrastructure, spaceship docks, and a rapid transport system. On the inside surface, whose area is orders of magnitude greater than a planet can offer, are recreated both realistic and more imaginative environments, where populations in the low trillions (though more normally just in the billions) can live comfortably and still have more than enough space to live in solitude if they prefer. 10/10 luxury space communist utopia, would implement irl.
Banks had immense fun coming up with different sorts of megastructure . Culture orbitals are probably the most mundane and practical, it's the Shellworlds from "Matter" that really caught my imagination.
@@stamfordly6463 What I like the most about orbitals is how "practical" they are (at least by megastructure standards).
The sheer coolest megastructure he shows is probably the nestworld (also in Matter), a kind of overgrown topopolis. The idea of a series of twisting tubes being a workable system seems insane until you consider just how large the diameter would be. Each segment needs to flex, but there's just so much length that the actual change on any one segment would be barely measurable. Banks kind of glosses over the nestworld because the Sursamen shellworld is the centrepiece of the novel, but it was the nestworld that really captured my imagination there. Still, I do prefer orbitals over shellworlds, they're just so elegant.
Hey I remember that thumbnail! Love that artist. Hope they're still working and doing well. Used a lot of their work as wallpapers for years.
I love how it's a bunch of super iconic shows/movies and Erik Wernquist. Wanderers is one of my favourite TH-cam videos of all time.
The topopolis in the bobiverse is interesting
One of my favorite megastructures is a proposal for an asteroid space habitat.
Find a large nickle-iron asteroid, clean any rock, dust, or ice its accumulated off its surface, and mine a large tunnel into its interior. Fill the tunnel with water ice and then plug the opening. Then get a large mirror array and use it to focus sunlight onto the asteroid, the heat will turn the ice into steam and partially melt the nickle-iron, causing the entire thing to inflate like a balloon, while any holes or cracks get sealed up by the semi-molten metal. After it gets to the right size remove the heat, wait for it to cool, drain the water out, and you have the shell of a space habitat all ready to go. Just spin it up, pressurize the interior, and start building things. Because the walls are solid nickle-iron, potentially meters thick, it offers fantastic radiation shielding and structural integrity without having to go through the process of manufacturing a hull from scratch.
I see you read a lot of "Larry Niven"s" works? He came up with that idea and used it decades ago in his stories about the asteroid belt and how the people lived there without artificial gravity.
I like Babylon 5 for the way they made gravity for the station you get to really understand it at the end of season2 when Sheridan jumps out of the transport he's weight less but the station is spinning so fast it would kill him if he hit it! I've never seen that before or since.
Y’know what one of the things is that makes this a great video? You did this topic because YOU wanted to do it. Makes it so genuine! And it’s just fun :) megastructures are so cool
Megastructures are awesome, and there's so many possibilities. Though I will need to bring up one collection of megastructures in response to the resources problem, the structures to perform Starlifting. One scientifically plausable structure magnetically constrains the solar wind into another structure that captures it and seperates the different elements, with one more structure intensifying the solar wind using either mirrors or magnetic pressure. Almost 99% of all matter in the solar system is in the sun, so there is a LOT of EVERYTHING there.
Everything in X4 is a megastructure
I... emphatically disagree. Even the biggest player-built vertically integrated stations are the size of large cities, and don't even approach the size of an O'neill Cylinder. They are highly advanced, yes, and dwarf things like the real-life International Space Station. But they're all still at a familiar scale. The only thing in X4 that I think counts is the (remains of the) Torus Aeternal. And that's on the small end.
ain't gonna lie, I was hoping to see the Torus from X3TC show up here
@@XenonSlayer Same, it's definitely a personal favourite of mine. The Hub might also have been a possiblity. ;)
@@cpugwash7085 We do not mention The Hub... so many Microchip deliveries....
I love O'Neil Cylinders. They look so cool. The full earth environment ones they have in Gundam are really neat and I love the idea of what it must be like to be in one of them.
One interesting element of the early Might and Magic games (except for 3) are their reveals that the fantasy worlds they take place on are megastructures (artificial flat worlds), not planets (World of Xeen culminates in the two-sided flat world becoming a round planet as the culmination of the main experiment it was intended for, but that's the Ancients for you).
Was kinda hoping to see a Jupiter Brain mentioned, but this list is fantastic!
I like the disks because if the source doesnt move its perpetual twilight. Perfect fantasy setting and I use it as the fairy dimension.
Blame! Has a fun megastructure
OMGGG YAYYYY ITS THE MEGASTRUCTURES EPISODE I LOVE YOU SPACEDOCK !!!!!
"Its Blame! I'm talking about Blame!" - That quote by itself made me smile so much.
“I’m talking about Blame”
DUDE! YES!
Stellaris gigastructures and megastructures it really is so freaking cool, even if they take forever to build.
Star wars actually does have some megastructures but they are almost all artefacts left behind by the ancient beings known as the Celestials some of them are:
Sinkhole station, Centerpoint station and the cosmic turbine: a series of massive space stations built around artificial suns designed to Astroform the galaxy by grabbing planets in massive tractor beams and move them somewhere else by ripping a hole into hyperspace and moving them through it
The Aur Diamonds: two planets and an asteroid belt made entirely of diamond
The Diatian Clockwork: essentially a ringworld but it's just a giant cog
Also several artificially constructed star systems and some other miscellaneous artefacts and besides the giant tractor beams and one of the constructed systems no one has any idea what purpose any of them serve or if they serve any purpose at all
I genuinely hate the phrase waste heat. Let's not forget, in contemporary submarines and super carriers, heat is the point. Their reactors generate heat to turn it into electricity. The heat boils a coolant, the pressure of this expanding coolant spins a turbine, generating electricity while returning the coolant to a liquid state. Long before that trains used the same concept, except with coal instead of uranium and turning heat into kinetic energy rather than electricity. Why wouldn't far more advanced structures try to claw back energy they are losing as heat to make themselves more efficient?
Because space isn't cold, space is nothing. There's no air or other medium for conduction or convection. The only way to lose heat is through radiation with is slow, relatively. This means that objects with a power plant, computers, or any other sort of thermal output inside the thing tend to create more heat than the object loses. A nuclear reactor on a ship is cool and all, but if you don't fin a way to deal with *all* the heat on the ship, the crew will cook. A space ship is *almost* a closed thermal system. And the heat builds and builds and builds and has to go *somewhere.* "Waste heat" is "too much heat"
@@tearstoneactual9773 Yes, I understand that being too hot is bad. I also understand that it is difficult to defuse heat outside of an atmosphere, though space isn't specifically important to my point. My point is that heat is energy, a form of energy that we know how to turn into other kinds of energy. We have done it for literally centuries. So why not keep doing that?
It's about entropy, it's usually considered waste heat because it's more in a form it would cost more energy to recover and use than we'd get from it.
Thermodynamics is pretty unforgiving, now having some way to get around the laws of thermodynamics is honestly a solid plot point for a Sci fi setting.
@@Andrew-qw1kq If an author wrote that it takes more energy to convert excess heat into electricity than you would get out of it, I'd roll my eyes pretty hard since that is exactly how the reactors on modern warships work. But I guess I could buy into the idea that the extra mass added to the ship outweigh the benefits. Except that, would radiator panels really be that much lighter? You have to add mass in some way to deal with the heat, might as well be something that would give energy back in the process. I think the authors who use radiators just like the aesthetic of the radiators and are trying to justify it by saying it is hard scifi.
Problem is that any civilization advanced enough to make a megastructure on the scale of a Dyson sphere…wouldn’t NEED to
Same me the comment, mega structures would only be done out of boredom not out of necessity
The solid Dyson Sphere is inefficient vs the Dyson Swarm of millions of habitats harvesting solar radiation, but megastructures in general are a far more realistic consequence of a technological advanced space based civilization than the numerous sci-fi settings with billions of earth-like planets, accessible with FTL to allow everyone to live-action roleplay the age of sail.
You dont need to be advanced to build a dyson swarm. It can just be a lot of normal solar panels and space habitats orbiting a star, the only thing extream about it is the number of them. It may turn out a lot of the wilder scifi dreams of ftl, force feilds and zero-point energy never pan out, but you dont need those to build a dyson sphere. Just live in one star ststem for long enough and you'll acumalate a pretty dense cloud of infrastructure around it.
My favorite mega structures would either be the city from BLAME!, Half Life 2's Citadel, and Mata Nui from Bionicle. I just love how their networks of spaces feel living, and in Mata Nui's case it actually being "living."
Fun fact:
The original Dyson Sphere was intended to be what we call now a Dyson Swarm; a collection of sattelites rather than a splid sphere.
It was Perry Rhodan who first popularized and conected the term od 'sphere' with an actual solid sphere.
My favorite megastructure/BDO in science fiction would be Greg Bear's The Way. It's also technically the largest megastructure in all fiction 😎
Wow. Blast from the past lol. Read that series in high school…in the 80s lol. But you are correct sir! And it was fascinating too!
Im so happy you mentioned alderson disk. :D
While I'm early: Could we have a Top 5/10 Sci-Fi Submarines episode? They're one of the only types of vehicle that never got one, and there are some really cool ones out there.
Yes! (ahem) SeaQuest DSV something something something....
Never thought I'd se Iserlohn Fortress ever mentioned but here we are.
First of all: O'neill. Two Ls. Great job on that.
Secondly: Perhaps designating the size of structures could be split up into different classes, due to the practicality of building any of them with the restrictions of the MODERN world, including ships. I would say anything over one kilometer is a megastructure. Over 10 km, giga. 100 km is super. 1000 km hyper. 10000 km is ultra. And over 100000 km is insane(not that it shouldn't be built, it's just crazy that we made it that far). I welcome any additional prefixes you might have for this, or your input on what scale to classify each one at.
So wild! This was a neat compilation and thought exercise for the future! 🖖🏼
BLAME!'s megastructure is still the most iconic one in my opnion, the artist was able to convey sooooo much imagination without a lot of words and exposition.
In the book I’m writing there is a ring world megastructure that encircled it’s Solar System but at the time the book takes place in this structure is in ruins and horribly wrecked with only a few tiny pieces of it still habitable. The system itself is completely dead with the planets either missing or burned up slag, the star itself is gone.
Whoo, unexpected Destiny mention!
Vex megastructures are certainly grand and mysterious, but the Cabal Empire certainly had a few things that I feel were big enough to qualify as "mega" such as The Leviathan and The Almighty. Pity the later of them blew up. Supposedly the Hive also make "war moons" that we have yet to see in game.
One of the niftiest things about Larry Niven's Ringworld is that it is a normal-space travelling vessel (by selectively controlling its central star) AND it's also equipped with a Quantum II hyperdrive. At one million miles across and about 600 million miles long, with sidewalls 1,000 miles high to hold in the atmosphere without need of artificial gravity, "It will be some time before people complain about the crowding."
A little disappointed Treasure planet wasn't shown or mentioned but another banger anyway. Keep it up
One of my favorite mega structures is from the Crimson Worlds series by Jay Allan. Its a planetary scale anti-matter production facility, built into the planet's crust and surface. It leverages geothermal, tectonic, solar, and volcanic (presumably the lava equivalent to underground hydro power) to power the massive planet-circling underground colliders that produce antimatter.
Speaking of destiny and megastructures. The vex home system is an artificially fueled primordial star.
For the mighty algorithm gods 🍻
That space-based solar power thing has existed in SimCity for some time now.
If my quick, half asleep, calculations are correct. A Dyson sphere, with a radius the same as earth's orbit, would have about 70 quadrillion square kilometres of surface area.
Speaking of Megastructures, are you ever going to talk about the Stellaser? It’s potentially the easiest way to create giant lasers in space.
Can you cover Thunderbirds 2, 3, 4 and 5? As well as FAB 1, and Tracy Island?
Don't forget Stingray i love that Submarine.
I love the Thunderbirds!
According to legend, Rolls-Royce absolutely *F@CKING HATED* FAB-1 so much, that they took out an injunction when the live action Thunderbirds movie was made, saying they couldn't depict it as being a Rolls-Royce, and thus for the movie FAB-1 becomes a Chrysler
@@weldonwin their loss.
Notably absent here are *organic* megastructures. The Brethren Moons and The Iris from Gemini Home Entertainment both come to mind.
Also surprised there was no mention of "V'ger" from Star Trek here
Then there's Rain World, with its superstructures' functions drastically altering life below with the obliterating downpours they produce as a byproduct of thinking.
I really love the idea of how things around active superstructures adapt.
Well, Star Wars Legends has some magical megastructures like the Maw being a celestial prison, for example.
SFIA (Isaac Arthur) has some really good videos about Megastructures as well if you are looking for more great info about them! This is a really great video!!
That moment in Dyson Sphere Program when you realise you can see from the planet those solar swarms coming together in orbit around the star was one of the most magical moments I've had in gaming. 3:32
I find that just taking it literally makes for a solid definition. Mega is million, so it should be roughly the equivalent of a million structures or more. Which structures (sheds, skyscrapers) and which equivalency (mass, population size) allows for wiggle room.
Fun facts about Dyson spheres.
A solid Dyson sphere is calles a Dyson shell.
Dyson swarms are the original concept by Freeman Dyson, that was then re-interpreted into the shells by Sci-Fi.
One of the more plausible megastructures I like is a ring world where centripetal force keeps it at altitude above a planet's surface allowing static structures to be supported by it. Thus, gravity comes from the planet above which it is elevated.
Megastructures: Mid
Gigastructures: Based
Ive recently realized there are no universe scale megastructures, the closest being the Xelee ring which is a bunch of galaxies turned into a ring.
Theres hardly any Megastructures in sci fi that are like eldritchly oppressively collossal.
wait until you heard about blokkonstrukt
The megastructures that you see in the skybox of the Homeworld games are also awesome, like in the Karos Graveyard, some of those things are debris coming from ships. Then there is the Balcora Gate.
I would love if you did more videos focusing on specific megastructures!
Blame! and ecumenopoli mentioned :D
If you like megastructures you should look at Homeworld background structures. They are HUGE, and I mean "still looking big from dozens of light years away" huge.
I think the vastness of space doesnt really sink in until a mega structure is introduced. When shield worlds in halo were described as being 2au in diameter i had to stop and let that sink in for a moment.
Alderson disks require mind-bogglingly high _compressive_ strength to not collapse.
Would you call The Creation Facility in Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy where they made Earth a Megastructure ?.
My two favorite megastructures are Galactotopopolis from Bigger Than Worlds by Larry Niven, and the dynamically supported Kepleria in the Mutual Progress Association from Orion's Arm.
The former is a tube habitat that spins along it's long axis to provide gravity on the inside surface, and loops around every star in the galaxy.
The latter is a nested sculpture of the Platonic Solids that encompasses a solar system, every structural member is a megastructure in it's own right.
The outermost solid of Kepleria is a cube 37,9 astronomical units to a side.
5:50 - while the Culture can churns out mega fleets on a weekly basis, its interesting that its ‘Orbital’ habitats, while being vast as large moons, aren’t big enough to be the orbit of anything. Recognising that the amount of mass and effort required to have an artificial structure wrapped around a natural one the size of a planet or star just isn’t worth the immense effort involved. The spectacle here isn’t the structure size, but the intricate and endless human fantasies that can be created within them.
I think a cool idea for a realistic megastructure is a space elevator with a big station at the end, but instead of it being a centrifuge, it would be a station essentially upside down from the planet it's tethered to. Use the centrifugal force of the planet’s rotation as your source of artificial gravity.
When I think of space superstructures, I always think of ways to easily destroy them in mere seconds, more especially if it takes a small thing like a chip of space paint. Planetary ground structures just feel more safer and comfortable to my mind, and if I have to live on space, I'd rather be on an Outlaw Star or on a Nebulon-B.
Anyways, would like you guys to talk about defense forces like the Gutsy Geoid Guard, X-COM/XCOM, and the Global Defense Initiative.
I always thought the definition of "megastructure" is implied in the name: any artificial structure that exceeds a mega-metre (1000 km) in at least one direction. This puts a clear defining line on their size. Though often you'll see things classified as megastructures that are much smaller than this, using 1 kilometre as the dividing line (noting that you probably need a bit more specificity, as we have plenty of highways or rail lines that exceed 1 km, and even 1000 km. Marketers would undoubtedly call our first 1 km tower a "megastructure", which would seal the meaning (paving the way for "gigastructures" etc, all out by a factor of 1000)...
1) mean starwars has the starforge a supershipyard/battle station that churns out intire fleets of capital ships in a couple hours also this absorbs energy from litteral stars and moves to another star after they absorb everything they can, it can also release that energy back as a superweapon.
2)there is also another starwars mega structure that causes littral gravitational collapses on planets and can be aimed from across the galexy.
3)There is also starkiller base as much as i hate disney they still built a megastructure more advanced than the death star,
it also absorbs energy from the stars to the extent of nearly killing them, it can shoot planet destroying blasts from across the galexy, can target multiple planets at the same time, not to mention this is a planetary superweapon functioning as 1 of the largest battlestations in starwars.
4)starwars has a massive history of building city sized ships and moon sized battlestations
6:25 I raise you Star Wars Legends Celestials and the Killiks, who built the Maw and the Corellian Star System, both of which i would count as Megastructures, even though they basically just moved exisiting celestial bodies into other places.