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.
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.