This thing will never materialize. It’s a vapor-project for stupid people to pour money into.
i wonder how easy it would be to build something that can reach the orbit and collide with the damn thing to deorbit it, if this nightmare ever becomes reality
For as long as there has been humankind, we have gazed up at the night sky, for comfort, for romance, for meditation, for curiosity, etc. It has been a core human experience, evolutionarily hard-wired into our humanity and psyche.
Now these Sociopathic Ferengi are going to steal that experience from every future human being, for profit.
Reminds me of the horrific ending to the movie Hancock (2008)
thankfully the us is the only country that has a sky so only their government’s approval is needed 😁👍
This is an important point, and partly why you’re not seeing ads up in the night sky just yet.
Cartoon Country.
A very unserious place with very serious problems.
Naw, the Simpsons was implying a far more useful sun blocking device. What the mirror is has much more impact and is in space.
fcc is not a science based department. they should have no say at all over environmental endeavors
They don’t, which is why they can’t prohibit this satellite. It meets all their requirements regarding radio interference.
The Satellite should absolutely be stopped, but the FCC isn’t the agency to do it.
Does the EPA still exist?
Effectively not
Why the fuck is every dystopian industrialist naming their shit after Tolkein? Does an artificial moon designed to fuck the natural order sound like something he would want to endorse?
They don’t have the literacy / abstract thinking necessary to understand themes and like the ‘vibes’ of nerdy things being cool now.
These corporate jerks see themselves as Aragorn but in reality they’re Wormtongue
Like many other things today, Peter’s fault
Elon likely never read Foundation, and it’s frustrating that he’s getting credit for it.
I do firmly put that on the people not doing their research, though. We should absolutely be bullying the shit out of people for being disingenuous in this way.
If I recall he was pretty anti fascist
I was just postulating to a friend, that if we built a huge array of solar panels, set out in a pattern not unlike solar sails, and deployed them out in-between the Earth and the Sun, we could block an appreciable amount of heat, which might act as a way to slow down climate change on our planet. Additionally this array could be connected in a grid, making it a huge space station, and energy source, where we could potentially use it as a base to start collecting and mining asteroids.
And then I read about these dumb mother fuckers who want to redirect sunlight back at the earth, making climate change worse, all to replace a couple flood lights? How fucking stupid is the person who brought this to reality? Jesus fucking christ.
Someone needs to read the Dyson Sphere paper: https://archive.org/download/dyson-1960-search-for-artificial-stellar-sources-of-infrared
(The paper was written as a sarcastic take on SETI sinking money into frivolous research of extra-terrestrial intelligence.)
Let’s beam down more heat! We totally need that on our rapidly heating planet.
And while we’re at it let’s just push even more shit above the earth because there’s totally not already a whole bunch of stuff up there.
Well, technically there really isn’t much up there now.
I mean in low earth orbit it’s what, 99.999999999999999999999 % empty space? With the tiny fraction left being satellites.
By that logic you wouldn’t mind if I loosed a bag of mosquitos in your house, would you?
I love this comment so much and I love “loosed” as a past tense verb even more.
Well let’s run with that. If you put a single mosquito in my house, I would have a higher ratio of mosquito to air than low earth orbit currently has in its ratio of satellites to empty space. (Seriously)
It’s easy to remove any number of mosquitos from your house, 1 person and a swatter can get it done. It’s incredibly expensive, laborious and dangers to remove LEO satellites. If something malfunctions then it’s essentially a stuck there until shot or nudged down.
That’s disingenuous though. You have to compute the orbital tube volume to account for the collision risks.
Yeah that’s true, calculating the actual collision risk is a whole different thing.
It was really just a joke, cause you know space is bigger and more empty than most people realize. Because what I said was “technically” true, if not super meaningful in any way.
That said, orbit isn’t too crowded yet, more is definitely going up, a lot more. Truth be told, 50 years from now, the number of satellites orbiting earth could easily be in the hundreds of thousands.
We’re at what, close to 20k right now?
Won’t take 50 years.
And not every orbit is equally useful. Near misses are getting more frequent, and it only takes 1 to start a chain reaction.
But a chain reaction in low earth orbit is generally short lived, atmospheric drag clears that up. A chain reaction in high earth orbit is exponentially less likely to happen. It’s the medium orbits to worry about, luckily they’re less popular for now, but as LEO fills up, they’ll likely start to be used more.
Lets send that heat down in a large vertical column piercing the entire way thru the atmosphere!
Birds can cook themselves in it!
Nobody will get rained on near this beam, so less big money tied up in umbrellas!
And think of the tornados that will form!
This thing will create the need for so much progress to undo its effects!
Brilliant!
Although this would also enable the alternate scenario of reducing incoming sunlight simply by turning them around. This project both doesn’t think far enough and much too far at the same time.
Also, we would need to finally abolish borders and create a world government for effective usage of such systems; this would enable the designation of areas where supercharged amounts of solar power are collected 24/7, while reducing solar input to areas experiencing heat waves.
It’ll only make a difference during the times in which it is being hit by a beam that wouldn’t otherwise hit the earth, since whatever it reflects will be offset by some shadow behind it. I wonder if, as a matter of orbital mechanics, it would be possible to make the satellite orbit in such a way so that it never casts a shadow and is always in the sunlight.
I’m pretty sure I heard about this a while ago and the math just doesn’t math.
There’s a lot of fuckery afoot as far as space goes. There are even companies trying to get world governments to allow them to put satellites in space so ads can be beamed into the night sky. I made a video about it if anyone’s bored.
The good news is that the scientific community fought back hard against it. You never understand how badass astronomers are until you read up on corporations trying to arse themselves into space.
I support jettisoning corporations into space.
So uh… Florida made “Geoengineering and Weather Modification Activities” illegal.
So are they going to launch that into space from another state, because one would think launching such out of cape canaveral would be off limits
“Geoengineering and Weather Modification Activities” illegal.
That’s only when “the Jews TM” do it. When its capitalism then fine! See they are still spewing carbon into the atmosphere in Florida but they haven’t banned internal combustion engines, and they keep burning coal!
The Federal Communications Commission approved Reflect Orbital’s plan to launch Eärendil-1, an experimental satellite carrying an 18-meter-wide reflective surface. The mirror would redirect sunlight toward a targeted area after dark, producing a beam roughly five kilometers wide.
The July 9 authorization applies to one demonstration satellite, not the enormous constellation the California company eventually hopes to build. Reflect Orbital has described plans for more than 50,000 mirrors by 2035, creating what it calls “sunlight on demand.”
oh cool, more supervillains appropriating Tolkien
Servants of Morgoth.
Quite the opposite. The Star of Eärendil was a guardian of the Doors of Night, through which Morgoth was banished.
It was light from Eärendil, stored in the Phial of Galadirel, that was instrumental in defeating Shelob in Lord of the Rings.
Quite the opposite.
So the supervillains appropriating Tolkien are not the servants of Morgoth, or is one of us misunderstanding?
There are no “supervillains” and Morgoth is a fictional character, so yes, one of us is misunderstanding.
Clearly…
“Sunlight on demand” is an exaggeration. The plan is to create a 5km spot of 0.1 lux, which is a bit brighter than a full moon.
Every time I’ve seen this news posted (and I’ve seen it a lot over the past few days) everyone has leapt to some very extreme conclusions.
Not really extreme. The whole concept is bonkers. What right has a company to destroy the night huge numbers of people and not mention wildlife.
Don’t worry it’s not going to happen. They’re just after investor money then they’ll vanish.
Even if they actually build this, a very small area of the planet is going to be imperceptibly brighter for 35 seconds.
People also said A.I. wouldn’t happen. I don’t trust them to not find some way to implement it in the worst possible way that impacts all of humanity. Like permanent daylight or something so there’s never time to sleep but now there’s 12 more hours in the day
They’re still limited by the laws of physics and geometry. Assuming perfect reflection and perfect alignment with the sun to the target destination you’re looking at something like 0.1 percent of the total brightness worth of energy being transmitted to the surface of the earth.
In other words, considerably dimmer than the moon. It’s not going to turn night to day, it’s not even going to turn at night to dusk, it will be the brightness of a crescent moon on an overcast night, assuming clear conditions. Covering an area of less than 3 km for a period of time of less than 20 minutes (increase the orbital altitude and you increase the amount of time that you can be over an area but you also decrease the brightness) I don’t think Mr Badger is really going to notice.
But as I said this is irrelevant because they know this which is why they’re not going to do it.
I agree with you that the current thing seems innocuous enough… but I think we’ve all been traumatised by recent events. Things have had a way of escalating extremely quickly, like: “oh yeah, we just approved 10,000 more satellites without even giving the general public a chance to react, so what?” Also, someone should coin that anime name.
…in the work day
It’s a 5km diameter target area. It’s not going to be shining on random patches of wilderness.
That’s just for one mirror, they’re saying they want fifty thousand up there.
But they only have approval for one.
It’s a 50k constellation or some proportion that’s the problem. Also it’s who gets to approve such a monstrous plan? Surely not a national government as it is an international issue.
Also it’s who gets to approve such a monstrous plan?
The FCC. It’s in the title. There’s more detail in the article if you want.
Surely not a national government as it is an international issue.
Satellites have always been regulated by the nation they’re launched from or owned by. There are international treaties regulating some aspects of that, but treaties are implemented by their signatories - the national governments.
My point is why the FCC? It is a US government entity and as the current US government is pretty rabid, why should they be able to inflict this sort of thing on the the rest of the world? Maybe this will be a straw too many and force change. The whole Starlink debacle is bad enough but to add huge mirrors is just madness.
That would be multiplied by 50k according to their plan, wouldn’t it? That’s a lot of moons.
It would be completely impossible for them to all focus on the same spot, they’d be distributed around the world.
Also, that’s not been approved. This approval is for a single prototype.
The amount of light pollution we have from cities is already more than necessary given that it covers makes most stars impossible to see.
I don’t think a large quantity of small fake moons is gonna help with that.
Last time a proposal like this made the rounds on the Internet stirring up consternation, the proposal was to use space mirrors to replace the street lighting for the Chinese city of Chengdu. It would have had no net effect on light pollution and would have reduced electricity consumption to boot.
Bear in mind, this mirror focuses its light on a specific 5km-diameter patch of land. It won’t be visible elsewhere.
The visibility doesn’t consider the massive glow that would appear to anyone seeing them outside their intended area of use due to reflections off dust and particles in the atmosphere. Light pollution goes far outside the area where cities are for the same reason, and having these in low earth orbit as a replacement for streetlights or as a spotlight would both have that happening.
I was not thinking about combining the beans, but about the surface that 50k of them would cover and the amount of additional light that would represent. I do hope it’s just some vaporware.
Why would they spread the light evenly? They’re planning on selling it. Someone would need to pay them to have a place illuminated, it’s not going to be randomly beamed all over.
Again you’re implying something I didn’t mean, but the point is that having 50k times the equivalent of the moon light intensity is expected to have a bad impact on the environment.
Why is the FCC approving anything related to space?
To make it look like it went through some kind of evaluation done by experts, instead trump just saying it is ok after a payment.
Oh not this again. I agree the it sets a stupid precedent but the act itself is irrelevant.
Far apart from the fact that it’s only going to be over any given area of the earth for about a minute tops, but also pointless because it’s only 18 m wide, so you won’t be paying for sunlight, you’ll be paying for a random spec in the sky to be switched on.
This is all a giant con where they’re trying to get a bunch of investment money from idiots that don’t know basic physics but do have a lot of money. I’d actually put a reasonable amount of money on this never actually launching.
The illumination would last only a few minutes at one location before the mirror required repointing. Reflect Orbital says the technology could extend solar power production after sunset, illuminate construction areas and assist rescue teams working in darkness.
Flare guns already do this for a lot cheaper. They even come in a choice of colours.
The company has also argued that reflected sunlight could provide temporary lighting without diesel generators or permanent ground infrastructure.
Sure it just requires that you build a giant precision mirror array, launch it into orbit, and then constantly monitor and position it from the ground, but god damn if you won’t need a bulky, polluting flashlight ever again.
What an absolute fucking joke of a proposal. Yeah, let’s blanket the earth in mirrors so that we can light up some random construction site temporarily.
heaven forbid you need to illuminate two completely different areas of earth simultaneously. is this is the least cost efficient solar powered device ever?
Oh, no, don’t worry about that, this is just a test to see if it works… They plan to put 50,000 of these things in orbit.
Aren’t they worried that the bazillion of SpaceX satellites will cast shadows on their light beams?
I don’t think they are that worried, since their plan is basically just to use pseudo-science magic words to remove money from investors.
Oh, right. That’s fine then.
Well, it’s true that if you need to illuminate a site for two and a half minutes but can’t build anything on the ground, it’s a
greatsolution. Is it the best solution? Maybe not. Is it a solution? You bet it is.We have portable energy sources. They’re pretty efficient. Especially comparable to an orbital launch.
Illuminate construction sites? With a flare gun? They have lamps, you know. And yeah, also cheaper
If god wanted me to use lamps, god would’ve invented a ‘lamp gun’. Since He didn’t, we’re just gonna have to make do with the tools god did give us, now pass me the lite beer and cover your ears - it’s illuminating time.
