Biggest Disappointment in Space Exploration, Aliens Hiding, Privatisation of Space | Q&A 304

Additionally, the Kardashev scale has come to be that we are able to produce as much energy as you receive on your planet, or the energy made by the sun, galaxy, universe or multiverse. I think we would want more portable sources of energy than the sun.

Kepler was a waste of $600 million of taxpayer dollars. Actual costs was probably way more if you factor in the cost to NASA itself in engineers, time, pensions, etc…

Dyson spheres are a figment of Human imagination, and misguided.

I dunno about whole regions of Dyson'd stars. I'd want to send robots to Alpha Centauri to bring back all possible resources, but living there would make no sense when I could live here instead.

My parents say I'm the biggest disappointment on Earth…

I’ve always had an issue with the concept behind the Fermi Paradox, or at least with how people frame it using Kardashev’s scale. I don’t believe a Type I civilization is even realistically achievable—let alone Type II—unless the definitions are kept deliberately vague.

If we take it literally—using all of a planet’s energy (geothermal, wind, solar, lightning, tidal, etc.)—then the idea falls apart before we even get started. It’s not just impractical or infeasible; I’d argue it’s physically impossible. What does it even mean to "use 100% of a planet's geothermal energy"? Would we extract heat from the core until the mantle stops convecting? That’d destabilize the planet.

And solar? There are no materials capable of capturing and converting 100% of the solar energy that hits a surface—let alone the entire planet. The theoretical maximum efficiency for energy conversion tops out around 93% under perfect thermodynamic conditions, which aren't even achievable.

As for a Type II civilization, the concept is even more out there. A Dyson swarm can't capture all of a star's energy. As long as photons can escape between collectors, you're not at 100%. And thermal radiation is a huge part of a star’s output. A true Type II would need to trap everything—no light, no heat, no emissions. It would appear as a perfect blackbody—possibly indistinguishable from a black hole in some wavelengths. But even if you could build a solid shell (which is already engineering insanity), no known material can absorb and convert 100% of that energy.

This is where the whole idea starts to feel nonsensical. In real-world physics—especially quantum mechanics and thermodynamics—100% energy conversion simply doesn't exist. There's always loss. If that weren’t the case, we’d have perpetual motion machines and zero-point energy devices, both of which violate fundamental physical laws.

And I haven’t even touched on more esoteric sources like planetary motion, quantum tunneling energy, or entropy gradients. Would a Type II need to harvest those too?

You’d have to stretch the meaning of “ALL” into something basically meaningless to make any of this work.

Just saying. 😂

As for the other civs, the light of what they are doing, might not have yet reached us. Galaxies that are millions to billions of Light years away, might be being enclosed today, and we would not know as the light from them won't get here for a very long time…

🎈🎈🍼🍼

How realistic is the assumption that we could see dyson spheres in infrared? A civilization should pick the low hanging fruit first before going for the higher up stuff. Building a megastructure like a dyson sphere is really hard. Wouldn't it be easier to first optimize your existing machinery to get more energy out of them, to the point that IR waste heat isn't a thing?

What would be technologically "easier": a Ringworld around a G or K star, or a Dyson Sphere around a red dwarf?

Thanks for the answers

Awesome that you can focus on the stuff you are curious about.

I really hope that the new website subscription model works for you. The only thing it doesn't give you is new viewers. I hope you figure it out, and that thousands of worthwhile citizen reporters follow suit.

Space is vast!
Maybe the aliens cant travel far enough to get to Earth.

Too much assumptions about the Kardashev scale and civilizations to be honest. A few of those being about energy use, type of energy being used or even the need for it The Dyson spheres (actually swarm) encompassing an entire star, never mind a galaxy, I mean do people not realize how small the humanoids form build to us are, or rather do they not realize how big planets and stars are relative to their own size and engineering logic? To cover an entire planet Earth with solar panel detectable at huge distances is one thing but a star? Geez! Let's bring it down a couple of notches fellow dreamers, expand our horizons but also not be restricted into assuming if there are others out there, they doing it the same way we'd do it, if at all ( even for humans here on earth, not everyone is sold on technology) we must crawl and walk before trying to run!

I don't understand the need to harvest stars. Any kind of matter already contains a ludicrous amount of energy, right? If an advanced civilization was able to harvest energy from any grain of dust with maximum efficiency, would they really need to harvest their star? It sounds like less energy that the condensed energy that is matter.

I'd love to see a proposal for an economy of scale NASA mission (conjunction with Space X) for creating Mutiple missions like JWST. There is such a demand for time of these projects so if the thousands of users paid for their time you could likely build multiple telescopes (or instance). What did JWST actually cost to build (vice R&D and cost to put it in space. I imagine a future when Governments pay for the R&D, contract the build out to private companies and the "Subscriptions" pay for the construction and launch.

Bit of an oddball, but please indulge me if you would:
(powers of perception at play here)

If our universe was contianed within a dyson sphere for the sole use and purpose as a battery, would we ever know it? Could there be anything done if we did, before it was too late? (As in we just happen to be that unlucky matter living within some alien's power node for example. And maybe we are a self-sustaining universe used for sustained power output.) There's plenty of evidence to suggest we are not, but what if we were?

Thank you, Mr. Cain.

Fraser, your commitment and discipline are amazing. Ive got your back on Patreon. Keep up the great work.