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.
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.
We had a solution for this MOONTOWERS
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.
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?
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
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.
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Wernstrom!
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.
This is the material analysis we need to be doing. During COVID I saw farmers shredding crops instead of selling them because we lacked the transportation capacity to get food to market. “How the fuck is that even possible?” you ask? We rely too much on individual truckers when we should be using rail… And that’s kind of an analogy for the whole market.
No system in place to ensure there is enough energy, water, food, steel, concrete, lumber, etc. to go around, just this vague hope that “the market will respond to price information as it always does”.
Well now that price information is telling people to invest in space mirrors to send sunlight to their AI-powered saffron gardens, employing cheap foreign workers rather than local labour so that they can sell the spice to wealthy people. So yeah I think that mechanic is busted now and needs a rethink.
The difference is that the most under invested real economy promises little to no profits because of saturation, while these techbros are always ready to promise the moon from the sky. Nothing gets done and less flashy industries stay uncompetitive.
Because they’ve destroyed the economy
