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 literally, actually a bond villain plot
Moonraker.
Moonraker was eugenics and nerve gas. Die Another Day was big space mirror.
This is obviously a scam directed at venture capitalists. There’s no way this is going to happen.
Okay, but can we execute these people for putting this concept into the world anyway?
Suncoin for sale.
The future we hoped for: Dyson sphere, free unlimited energy
The future silicon valley shitlords are hoping for: let us sell you sunlight (or maybe lack thereof, wink wink)
Ah ha, exactly
this is one of the worst ideas that has ever come from capitalism dawg what the fuck who even thinks of this what rich fuck is gonna be paying to make it daytime at night…
its not just impractical, it is just entirely pointless and we already have way too much space pollution because of fuckin starlink
Was it not so bad when the (ex) soviets did it?
This is past soviet collapse and a literal monetary venture the whole point was to use it to sell access to it for the few rich places that could possibly want that, thats capitalist theres literally no use for it except for use in trying to increase wealth for a smaller group that has access to the technology and can suddenly control natural resources without even colonizing or genociding a place to get it they can starve countries or have a permanent advantage at the cost of the rest of society
Capitalism will steal the very foundations of life and sell it to you to make a buck. They will siphon the life force from the earth in order to benefit themselves. I honestly try and look at things dispassionately and put it all in perspective but DAM it’s hard not to be emotional when you see what these fucking stinking pigs are up to on their mountain.
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
Except torches, they won’t be needing those
Well, those are for the fire. You know, can’t burn someone alive at the stake if you have no fire.
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As mentioned in a different comment, this isn’t the problem.
These aren’t planned to block out the sun everywhere. They’re planned to light up specific small regions.
There are real problems like the potential for mishaps blinding pilots (hopefully only temporarily), ruining earth based astronomy, adding to space waste, and more, but the fear of blocking out the sun would only be a real one if they had an amount of mirror coverage its hard to imagine.
ah you may have missed my meaning there. I was concerned about sunlight going somewhere in the middle of the night. Things need it to be dark. Since both the article and other commenters had already addressed the issues to people I thought I would bring up that its an environmental disaster as well
I dont think I misunderstood, I think you’re thinking that this would make places dark where they shouldnt be or light up a whole country or something, but thats not how it could work
neither actually. I don’t think this is ringworld, light pollution from lighting up a single building at night with sunlight would play holy hell with the ecosystem. Along with all the other problems
even the proposed three mile patches of sunlight mentioned in the article would be incredibly impactful and in fact the article does briefly mention the environmental impact:
“Past research on light pollution has also shown that it can alter the behavior of a wide array of animals and plant species, as well as disrupt human sleep cycles.”
Wernstrom!
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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.
Maybe we can hack it and use it to burn down Mar-a-Lago
Rich people should not have the choice to have fucking sunlight in the middle of the night.
They’re so fucking bored, they NEED to do stupid shit like this. They need to have what others don’t have.
It’s nice how, in theory, some crackhead silicon valley startup would be allowed to single handedly fuck up just about everything
Next idea : Shining ads in space, powered by sunlight, so people always have something to look at. /puke
“In theory”? More like “Move fast and break society.”
Yeah, but think of the value they will create for the shareholders!
Don’t worry, this type of Space Nuttery is merely a way to extract money from even dumber billionaires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaren
None of the Space Nuttery fantasies will ever happen.
Capitalism is at it again 🤦 What are they selling next? Air?
Are we talking Spaceballs or Total Recall?
We’re definitely spaceballs
Total recall gives me instant flashbacks to the mutant scene, the cool part and the creepy part.
They already sell air (of Mountain Fuji) in Japan.
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
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.
Reminds me of this other terrible dystopian idea I saw the other day: https://nz.news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-announces-plan-control-182840080.html
Glad billionaires think they can steal the sun and sell it back to us now.
Less Sun = Less Plants = Less Carbon Sink = 🤦
