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> there's really not much you can do apart from moving the whole damn planet out of the way.

You can put something in between, a giant sun shade



Chunks of other planets, we have always been pretty good at creating explosives previous generations couldn't even fathom so such destructive disposition may get to be a positive thing for once.


Can artificial clouds help? Geo hacking might be cheaper than building billions of acres of shade.


We just build an L1 Solar park for micro g manufacturing of space mined materials.


Can you without making a ringworld?


I guess you’re thinking of something that orbits earth? If you build something that orbits the sun at the same rate as us then it could just be flat and circular.

Maybe someone smarter than me can calculate the optimal parameters to get the smallest shade that orbits the sun. If we are looking to only block out a percentage of the sun then it doesn’t even need to be fully opaque, maybe a giant dream catcher would be fine.


>orbits the sun at the same rate as us

That means you're heavily restricted in where you can put it. It has to be either right next to earth, in which case it's hard to keep away from Earth, or at L1, which is not stable. There's no other place you can put something where it will stay directly between us and the sun.


Why restricted? Are we assuming it does not produce thrust here? Because it could.


It's wildly impractical to try to keep something far from a stable orbit with active thrust long-term. I mean, why don't we all have flying houses? It'd be cool.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point

And already a known option for our current global warming situation.


Shades could just orbit like any other artificial satellite. It does not have to block the sun all of the time, just part of the day.

I suspect the atmosphere, ecology and albedo would adjust to radiate the extra energy away anyway.


Or a giant solar array?




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