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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

>> sunlight takes about 30,000 years to work its way out from the centre to the surface of the Sun

> What? Why?

I had the same question, and it looks like there's lots of variation with the number. For instance, this website (https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/sun-space-weather/insid...) says it takes "millions of years."

Also, has anyone though of how mind-numbingly wasteful solar fusion is? All that energy, and only a tiny fraction makes it to Earth with the rest getting dumped wastefully into space. Seems like an area that's ripe for disruption by a startup.

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> Also, has anyone though of how mind-numbingly wasteful solar fusion is? All that energy, and only a tiny fraction makes it to Earth with the rest getting dumped wastefully into space. Seems like an area that's ripe for disruption by a startup.

That energy can be captured by a Dyson sphere:

> A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

EEVblog 1637: Solar Freakin' Space Mirrors! - Reflect Orbital DEBUNKED [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkjyeI0ykGM

>> Also, has anyone though of how mind-numbingly wasteful solar fusion is? All that energy, and only a tiny fraction makes it to Earth with the rest getting dumped wastefully into space. Seems like an area that's ripe for disruption by a startup.

> EEVblog 1637: Solar Freakin' Space Mirrors! - Reflect Orbital DEBUNKED [1]

That seems like a kludge because space mirrors are still going leave lots of energy dumped wastefully into space. But even if we could collect all the Sun's energy, there's no way we could use it all and it'd just fry the planet.

The kind of disruption I was thinking about was re-engineering the Sun so it only produces the energy the Earth needs. There are great monetization opportunities, because the technology would almost certainly allow for charging subscription fees for sunlight.

Then you are looking for star lifting. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting

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