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.
Does anyone else remember the scene in the movie called “The Core” where a giant beam of light started frying people and melting bridges?
Astronomers cannot warn at 2000C! Mhaaa ha ha ha ha ha!
Astronomers can barely warn even at 100C! Ha ha ha mha haha ha!
Capitalism is at it again 🤦 What are they selling next? Air?
If I was going to build death ray mirrors in space this is how I would pitch it.
Tf are people gonna do once you’ve built the death ray?
It’s not about selling sunshine, it’s about melting your enemies with the power of the sun.
New startup idea: iAir. Pay a certain amount of subscription for air, or we will choke you to death!
Mel Brooks had this covered in Spaceballs.
To a lesser extent, so did the Lorax’s Aloysius O’Hare.
We had a solution for this MOONTOWERS
Cut to: man watching in shock as his “mirror satellite” burns people like ants under a magnifier
this startup’s CEO and finding members should be trialed for crimes against humanity
Oh, I think it’s a wonderful plan for the startup. They don’t own space, they don’t have any control over space, they’re selling something that they know they can’t possibly deliver because they would have to get people to agree that they’re allowed to steal sunlight and space, and that would never happen. It’s great for them. They can get some cash.
It works with water, why not sun? People don’t have to agree, no one’s going to ask them. It’ll just happen.
Life on earth depends on day and night cycles. This would cause an environmental disaster. So many animals would get fucked up.
they’ll start by selling sunlight at night, but we know that it’ll end up being that we have to either pay to have sunlight in the daytime OR pay to not have sunlight at night.
It’s nice how, in theory, some crackhead silicon valley startup would be allowed to single handedly fuck up just about everything
“In theory”? More like “Move fast and break society.”
Yeah, but think of the value they will create for the shareholders!
Next idea : Shining ads in space, powered by sunlight, so people always have something to look at. /puke
Very useful on the off chance that vampires are real. Otherwise… Less so.
What are the space laws for if we nudge it into the sun?
Fun fact: pushing things into the sun is really difficult. Short version: imagine spinning a pendulum, then trying to slow it down, except the pendulum is 100kg (200lbs) and moving at 87 Mach.
Long version:
Anything launching from earth will have a significant orbital velocity around the sun by virtue of starting at the earth’s own velocity (~30km/s, about 67000 mph). That velocity makes it hard to actually reach the sun.
Consider that even the sun’s gravity isn’t enough to pull in the earth at that speed. Simply applying thrust towards the sun would have to amount to a significant portion of the sun’s gravity to make a noticeable difference.
So to reach the sun, you’d ideally have to get rid of that excess orbital velocity instead. That requires a lot of force, to put it mildly. That kind of force requires powerful boosters and a lot of fuel. Of course, getting those engines and that fuel up there also takes powerful engines and a lot of fuel. But the larger the rocket, the heavier it’ll be, so it’ll require even more fuel…
There’s a phenomenon dubbed the “Tyranny of the Rocket Equation”. It describes the problem that, at some point, the extra weight required to make a rocket more powerful is greater than the extra power it provides. That basically puts a limit on how strong a given engine can get. There’s a lot of work being done on getting them to be more efficient, so that limit is getting higher, but the bottom line is:
It would require an immense amount of resources to slow an object enough to toss it into the sun, and more resources to get them to that object in the first place.
Physics is a cruel mistress and a mean spoilsport.
Buy who cares? Money!
This entire thing is again stupid front to back, and for loads of money, of course
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
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Except torches, they won’t be needing those
