Need help on figuring out some #'s for the Dyson Sphere

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I'm having trouble doing some numerical estimates for calculating the Dyson Sphere that was found in ST:TNG S6e04 - "Relics"!

It was stated on screen to have a diameter of 200 million Kilometers while the Enterprise was outside scanning the surface. It's stated on screen that it has an internal surface area of approximately 250 million M-class planets.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Dyson_sphere
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...ision/latest?cb=20170314135313&path-prefix=en
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...ision/latest?cb=20140403132538&path-prefix=en

Given the info that we have, how thick do you think the shell is from the picture that I linked?
What is the Diameter of the largest circle on the exterior entry hatch?

 

[Timo]

We could compare the dimensions of the surface greeblies to those witnessed next to the known-length Jenol*n. The greeblies scale nicely: in the Jenol*n shots, a basic rectangle is a bit more than twice the length of that ship, and in the E-D close flybys, a similar rectangle is the length of the E-D. Thus, about 600 meters on the long side.

If we accept the two rectangles as the same and representing a Dyson-wide norm, we can see the door is eight rectangles across at the outer circle. Thus either sixteen-twenty Jenol*ns or eight E-Ds... In the fly-through scene, the latter estimate is supported, giving an outer ring diameter of about five kilometers, and a thickness of up to two kilometers.

I'm not sure where else we could begin in making such an estimate. There's no surface curvature we could use as the basis, or if there is, it must be "wrong" because a sphere anywhere near one AU in radius would't show any. Even if we said fifty kilometers across and twenty deep, or five thousand kilometers across and two thousand deep, this wouldn't contradict anything else but the comparison with the starships. Such minor variation wouldn't matter on the scale of the sphere at large.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

Well its 93 million miles to the sun, so a 93 million mile radius, and a 200 miliom mile diameter sounds correct. the shell.. a mile thick would be good. now structiral intgerity issues? No idea.. is being pulled in so there has to be some kind of integrity..

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

They claim it's made of Carbon-Neutronium alloy.

But that's not the important part that I care about!

 

[publiusr]

There may be openings both larger and smaller.

We never saw the poles

 

[Timo]

...One wonders what we did see. When the E-D escapes the Sphere, there are city blocks and cloud formations on the background, that is, behind the stern of the ship. Clearly, that can't be the far side of the shell - a thousand continents would not yet amount to one pixel at those distances. So why is the starship hugging the surface, flying a curved path towards the door slightly nose up (nose in) until supposedy doing a dive-down (dive-out) maneuver at the last minute?

Might be they simply didn't know exactly where the door was, what with all the malfunctions and interference from the star and whatnot, and just aimed at the general area and then established a search pattern. Might be they wanted to fly in "under the radar" lest the Sphere detect their approach and again do something unwanted (if ultimately benign) to them.

The latter might be a good bet: we see extreme curvature to the background, a steep U-shaped valley of some sort. Might be the ship is flying along the bottom of this valley to fool the door sensors, and only pulling up (pulling in) when the camera joins the action.

Timo Saloniemi