How Much Energy Would be Necessary to Disassemble the Earth?
Imagine that one day humanity decides to disassemble the planet and convert it into space colonies with a much greater combined internal surface area than the Earth’s prior surface. One possible method of doing this would be to build numerous space elevators: nanotube fiber ropes extending from the equator to a counterweight in geosynchronous orbit. An advanced network of space elevator could carry almost arbitrarily large loads upwards using armies of robotic climbers. Disassembling the entire planet could take a while, though. The gravitational potential energy of anything in geosynchronous orbit, relative to the Earth’s surface, is about 50 MJ (15 kWh) of energy per kilogram. The Earth contains about 6 × 1024 kg of mass, which would necessitate 1.2 × 1032 J of energy to send into GEO from the surface if the gravity were constant. The gravity would not be constant, however: after a significant amount of material is removed from the planet, its gravity would decrease considerably. As
Imagine that one day humanity decides to disassemble the planet and convert it into space colonies with a much greater combined internal surface area than the Earth’s prior surface. One possible method of doing this would be to build numerous space elevators: nanotube fiber ropes extending from the equator to a counterweight in geosynchronous orbit. An advanced network of space elevator could carry almost arbitrarily large loads upwards using armies of robotic climbers. Disassembling the entire planet could take a while, though. The gravitational potential energy of anything in geosynchronous orbit, relative to the Earth’s surface, is about 50 MJ (15 kWh) of energy per kilogram. The Earth contains about 6 × 1024 kg of mass, which would necessitate 1.2 × 1032 J of energy to send into GEO from the surface if the gravity were constant. The gravity would not be constant, however: after a significant amount of material is removed from the planet, its gravity would decrease considerably. A
