11th Global Trajectory Optimisation Competition
Published:
Background
“Dyson Sphere”, originally proposed by Freeman Dyson in 1960, is a hypothetical giant artificial structure composed of numerous solar-power satellites. It is designed to surround the Sun such that most energy produced by the Sun can be captured. We suppose that the propulsion technology will be greatly improved in the next century, and a multifunctional asteroid transfer device (ATD) will be invented. The ATD can be deployed on an asteroid to covert its materials into propellants and provide a continuous thrust for it to maneuver in space. With these technological advances, it is expected to build a preliminary “Dyson Sphere”, namely the “Dyson Ring”, which consists of a number of solar-power stations placed in the same orbit around the Sun, using materials of asteroids for construction. In particular, the plan is to build 12 stations in a “Dyson Ring” orbit, using asteroids selected from over 83000 candidates and transferred to those stations via ATDs. The task in GTOC-11 is to design the “Dyson Ring” orbit, placements of 12 stations in it, and a series of missions to transfer asteroids to these stations while maximizing the transferred asteroids mass and minimizing the cost (propellant) to accomplish these missions.
Current Status
As the solo player, I started the work 2 weeks before the deadline, but managed to complete the work. Unfotunately, I understand one of the constraint wrong, which leads to a final rank of 17th. My future corrections and publications of this part of work will be updated here.
The figure is from GTOC11 problem statement file: 