California-based startup Reflect Orbital aims to build a swarm of 4,000 giant mirrors in low Earth orbit to “sell sunlight” to customers at night. Experts warn that the mirrors could mess with telescopes, blind stargazers and impact the environment.
Reflect Orbital, which was founded in 2021, has recently taken the first step in a scheme to sell sunlight at night by bouncing solar rays off giant “reflectors” that can redirect the vital resource almost anywhere on our planet. By doing this, the company aims to extend daylight hours in specific locations, thus allowing paying customers to generate solar power, grow crops and replace urban lighting.
But experts say it is a wildly impractical plan that should never get off the ground. What’s more, the resulting light pollution could devastate ground-based astronomy, distract aircraft pilots and even blind stargazers.
Why are all the experts going on about the fact you might blind pilots but not talking about the fact that it won’t actually do anything.
It would have to be an astonishingly vast megastructure for it to have any effect at all. If we were talking about a structure 100 km across or more they might actually have some sort of point.
No.
for solar, a 5km diameter solar farm might hold 10m square meters of panels. at 250w each, 2.5gw solar farm. 4 times a full moon, is 1/100000th the rated capacity (noon at equator) of panels, and so 25kw of power. At 10c/kwh electricity revenue potential, such a farm (exists only in China) could break even offering to rent night light at $2.50/hour.
Batteries charged by solar can deliver profitable electricity at night for far less than 10c/kwh.
If you just want more light somewhere, it would be far cheaper to do from ground systems.
I almost wish this was not a practical impossibility just so we could get to see the headlines when some misalignment fries an island of billionaires like bacon.
This isn’t even possible and the cost even if it was would be ASTRONOMICAL.
If we could actually do this, couldn’t we also send up large Sun ray blockers that would help us control global warming?
So literal space lasers?
Joking aside this is a horrible idea even if it were possible to get right. Anything with circadian rhythm is going to get fucked up real fast and that includes people. This is like angry mob outside the corporate office level bad. Torches and pitchforks, the whole thing
All of these wacky silicon valley startups popping up just shriek very loudly that there is too much capital and not enough real economy to invest all that money into.
Because they’ve destroyed the economy
Why is this not an Onion piece???
You don’t even have to be an expert to see that this is one of the stupidest ideas ever conceived.
Throw these guys in a volcano. Add the billionaires and tech capitalists while at it.
A little Critical Thinking will tell you that this is either technically impossible, unbelievably expensive, or both. Probably both.
However, I encourage Sociopathic Oligarchs to dump as much of their money into it as possible.
Have we seen this episode on futurama?
