Review and viability of a Dyson Swarm as a form of Dyson Sphere

Abstract First conceptualised in Olaf Stapledon’s 1937 novel ‘Star Maker’, before being popularised by Freeman Dyson in the 1960s, Dyson Spheres are structures which surround a civilisation's sun to collect all the energy being radiated. This article presents a discussion of the features of such a feat of engineering, reviews the viability, scale and likely design of a Dyson structure, and analyses details about each stage of its construction and operation. It is found that a Dyson Swarm, a large array of individual satellites orbiting another celestial body, is the ideal design for such a structure as opposed to the solid sun-surrounding structure which is typically associated with the Dyson Sphere. In our solar system, such a structure based around Mars would be able to generate the Earth's 2019 global power consumption of 18.35 TW within fifty years once its construction has begun, which itself could start by 2040 using biennial launch windows. Alongside a 4.17 km2 ground-based heliostat array, the swarm of over 5.5 billion satellites would be constructed on the surface of Mars before being launched by electromagnetic accelerators into a Martian orbit. Efficiency of the Dyson Swarm ranges from 0.74–2.77% of the Sun’s 3.85 × 1026 W output, with large potential for growth as both current technologies improve, and future concepts are brought to reality in the time before and during the swarm’s construction. Not only would a Dyson Swarm provide a near-infinite, renewable power source for Earth, it would also allow for significant expansions in human space exploration and for our civilisation as a whole.