SCIENTIA.

   Above: Diagram of a conventional chemical rocket motor. 

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• Type I: Type I civilizations would be Planetary civilizations. Or civilizations with “A technological level close to the level presently attained on Earth,” as stated by Kardashev himself. These civilizations would be able to harness all of the energy available to their homeworld from their parent star. A Civilization like this could use methods such as the widespread utilization of an energy production method called nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is a process in which the nuclei of 2 lighter elements are slammed together at immense speeds forming the nucleus of a heavier element. This process will release energy because the mass of the heavier nucleus is less than the mass of the 2 lighter nuclei resulting in all of the leftover mass becoming energy. This mass to energy conversion is shown in Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 which shows that mass can be converted into energy and vice versa. In the case of humanity, acquiring fuel for this reaction would be fairly easy because one of the elements needed for the optimal fusion reaction, deuterium, can be found in massive quantities in our oceans. The other element, tritium, is unfortunately much rarer because the main way of acquiring it is as a byproduct of putting lithium into a nuclear reactor. Lithium itself is quite rare at the moment but if we gain the ability to extract it from our oceans then we would have more than enough fuel to get humanity to Type I and power it at that level for a further 10,000 years.

 Methods of acquiring power such as solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric would be much less feasible to allow a civilization to achieve Type I status. This is due to the fact that the structures needed to capture energy via these methods would require a vast amount of surface area on their home planet; this could potentially decimate the environment and cause a mass extinction. In the case of humanity, it is theorized that achieving Type I status using only surface based renewables would be impossible. This is because we would have to cover the entire planet with man-made structures, which would have devastating effects on the environment.  A more feasible method would be to launch large solar panels into space, which could theoretically beam massive amounts of solar energy to earth as microwave radiation without taking up space on the surface. Unfortunately, all of these energy production methods have a drawback. This drawback is that they would massively heat up the planet and cause massive shifts in the climate throughout, this is due to the fact that all of these energy sources aren't 100% efficient meaning that while they produce immense amounts of energy, they also produce large amounts of waste heat. 

• Type II: Type II civilizations could use the same methods as Type I civilizations but on multiple planets in their star system. These civilizations are defined by their capability to harness almost all of the energy radiated from their own star and would likely have colonies all over their home system. To achieve this, they would probably also have the technology to allow them to travel between planets freely and without major strain on their resources. To achieve type II status, a civilization of high type I (eg. 1.8/1.9) could choose to use their vast amounts of resources to build hypothetical megastructures such as Dyson swarms* or other such constructions to capture the energy output of their entire star. This would cause them to reach type II.

*A Dyson swarm is a theoretical mega-structure that utilizes a swarm of power satellites (basically giant solar cells) to encompass a star. This would absorb a large portion of the energy that the star gives out and could power an entire system with ease.