Memories of the 28th Century

The Earth is a wonderful place. It is the home of our species, and it is pleasant in innumerable ways, but we all know that the Earth is not formed in a way that maximizes utility, beauty, or anything. The nearly spherical shape and the axial tilt cause seasonal variations are annoying or worse. There are advantages in having changes in seasons, but we could manage it without having such great differences in the length of day and night. There may be people who think that I have this opinion because I live at high latitude where the midnight Sun shines, but, no, I live in the middle latitudes, where the nine o’clock Sun shines for a few days. I will confess that it is nice to have more Sun, but there are better ways to handle it; we could either add another Sun, or we could rebuild the Earth in a shape that would be more convenient.

Adding a second star would require a huge amount of matter and money. Reshaping the Earth would require a vast amount of energy and hard work, but it would require much less than adding a Sun, so we might consider it, but we would have to move out while the work was in progress. There are some problems with the Earth, and, if the Great Pandemic will not prove to be as effective as would be best, then we will soon need room for more humans, and we can’t expect spaceships that will be able to remove more than a few people. Therefore, I propose that we build a new and better planet that will be able to house a significant proportion of humanity. For several good reasons, the new planet will be put in an orbit between Earth and Mars. The zone of habitability around the Sun extends from some distance inside the orbit of Earth to about the perihelion of Mars (Mars’ closest approach to the Sun). And this suggests that replacing Mars with New Earth would work. It would need more material, but the Asteroid Belt is relatively nearby. Mars will provide a significant part of the material for it, but it will be bigger than Mars; although smaller than Earth.

An oblate sphere is simple and easy to form, but a significant part of the surface never faces directly toward the Sun, so relatively little energy is absorbed in those areas. A better shape for the Polar Regions would be a point, so that there would be a greater area exposed to the Sun. The main body would be a more efficient absorber of energy, if it were a cylinder instead of a sphere. So we could make the Earth, or maybe New Earth, a cylinder with a diameter of 7,000 miles, and its length would also be 7,000 miles, and beyond that cylindrical volume there would be points in the Polar Regions. It would use about the same amount of material as Earth, but it would be solid, and that would be a problem because the molten core would not be producing a strong magnetic field. With could create a strong magnetic field by putting an iron cylinder inside the planet from North to South. Giving the cylinder an electric charge and spinning that with respect to the rest of the planet would create a magnetic field. The problem of keeping the outer section separate from the core would be easily handled by giving the outer parts the same kind of electric charge as the core, and they would repel each other. We could later change the charge on the outside, and that would make the planet a direct current motor. And to keep things running we could stuff the gap with silicon nitride roller bearings (rollers and races). The melting point isn’t all that high, but it is higher than metals, so we can hope for the best. This system would produce a considerable amount of electricity and of magnetism, which would shield it from the Solar Wind, and it should be possible to extract enough electrical power to run the planet.

Because of the cylindrical shape, the atmosphere would be thicker in some areas than others, but the low atmosphere regions would be the Polar Regions, which would be designed to be uninhabitable. Because the mass and gravity would be the same as Earth’s, the atmospheric pressure over most of the new planet would be in the same range as Earth’s, but Earth has the Moon to strip away the outer layers of the atmosphere, while this planet would not have any moon, so there might be build-up of various gasses. We will have to keep any eye on that, or an excessive build-up of hydrocarbon gasses, which could cause the greenhouse effect.

In much less than geological eras we would a brand new planet with a surface area of about 230,907,000 square miles (17 % more than Earth) and that doesn't include the points at the poles). Not only would it be larger, but it would be more useful, because we will put oceans where we want them and keep them to a reasonable area. And until things got out of hands there would be no mountains, just lots of rolling prairies and small ranges of hills, so a much higher percent of the surface would be habitable and arable.

What features should we add that I might not think of? Now’s the time to suggest. It’ll be a few years before we build the thing, but we will want complete plans before then.

The next problems to handle would be paying for the new planet, or maybe we’ll just stiff the contractor for the quintillions of dollars that it would cost.