I do wonder if capital is so cheap or wealth inequality is actually much bigger problem then we thought so that excess capital ends up in ideas like this.
I don't think those are exclusive.
FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
131–140 of 164 posts
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The revenue potential is huge. Think of public events where people might want to illuminate the area as daylight for several hours. Galas, sports, concerts, parties, etc.. They will all pay top dollar and they have the funds. Could get sponsors, "Today's sunlight brought to you by NordVPN"
Frankly I don't see this happening before the year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
I've read enough of it to get the reference.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#133russians already tried in the nineties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite)
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#134at some point some rogue country is going to do a starfish-prime event create an artificial LEO radiation belt on purpose and wipe out 99% of satellites part of me is oddly rooting for it these days make Musk a millionaire again
You are the rogue country.
(And you actually know that, but since it benefits you, or at least so you are told, you are "not seeing" that.)
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anyway, even if it proves useful for something, it would join the long list of innovations doing one thing at the expense of everyone else (externality == light pollution in this case). That's a strange reading. What would keep the benefits from cheaper electricity from diffusing to roughly everyone, as they usually do?
I guess you can have both positive and negative externalities. I went back to re-read reflectorbital.com, indeed if you're only lighting a solar farm in the middle of nowhere maybe the light pollution is not so bad outside of the targeted zone. Still fells like a complicated solution to me. Imo we need more storage innovation and investment, a lot more. We know we'll have more and more intermittent renewables electri…
Oh, absolutely. The space mirror idea might be a net terrible idea; more panels and better batteries could simply be it.
I just don't see why, if this turns out to work, the benefits would not diffuse (principally because I don't see a line of previous innovations where this was not the case, electricity being a prime example of an extremely potent and well diffused commodity).
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#136I do wonder if capital is so cheap or wealth inequality is actually much bigger problem then we thought so that excess capital ends up in ideas like this.
I don't think those are exclusive.
Not a finance guy or economist, but in my head: capital being cheap still means investors want return on their capital and that puts some upper limit/threshold on the risk that they are willing to take vs Wealthy people having so much excess capital that they are deploying it at any project with zero regard for return, risk, feasibility or reality of it.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
If sattelites can reflect enough light to make an impact on e.g. global warming, they can also reflect enough to circumvent it. Point them back at the sun or into space and in theory it redirects the same amount of energy away from the earth as it would pointing towards it. That said, I'm (armchair) confident it'll be good for moonlight-level illumination on a local area at best. They'll need to scale up to thousands…
This is where people who think space access is only for satellites and LEO space stations have no imagination. We’re at a place now where if global warming did suddenly start to run away, within a year, we could realistically launch enough solar shades to meaningfully impact the situation. It’s far fetched, but this is why innovation in general is important. Not for what we know now, but for all the unknown ways it c…
Right now we're still not close to that kind of capacity.
I suspect just painting all the rooftops and tarmac white will be about as effective as 2000 Starship launches filled with mylar sheets, plus an L1 delivery system because one thing you really don't want for a global warming mitigation is for them to fall out of LEO and burn up almost immediately from the huge drag-to-inertia ratio.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those purposes, why would it need to be mirrors? We don't care to coherently reflect the light; we just want to block it. (For reference, I think all of these are likely to be somewhere between moderately and incredibly bad ideas...)
> We don't care to coherently reflect the light; we just want to block it. The energy has to go somewhere. If you're not reflecting it you're absorbing it and you eventually have to do something else with it.
In fairness, a white sheet and a mirrored sheet will have much the same impact in this regard.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Daylight helps you just as much as your enemy. We've got plenty of cutting edge night vision and thermal imaging devices for humans and radar on vehicles. The Army's 160th helicopter regiment can fly nap of the earth on a moonless night. Satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar can pickup human sized objects during a pass and can switch to sub-centimeter resolution in finer modes. If anything, the military prefers fi…
> Daylight helps you just as much as your enemy. Not if you're persistently using it for multi-week sleep deprivation operation to "soften up" an area before attacking.
I guess there's some niche applications but that's easily defeated with blackout curtains. Plus soldiers on a base are already pulling night shifts, making everyone on a "night shift". Still, they can only guarantee 100 lux (comparable to indoor lighting) for continuous periods with 50k+ satellites. That's a shit ton of infrastructure all tuned into one small operation.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#140Strictly from an energy conservation argument this doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me. Just some back of the envelope math if they take their current mirror size, make 50k of them and overlap all of the output on the same 3 mile spot (the spot size they claim they will get on a single mirror). With an ideal reflector it is still less than mid-day daylight. Thats 50k satellites to give you direct sun over one 3 mile spot.
I suppose to make this feasible they would have to up the size of the mirrors. Unless this is somehow dirt cheap I can't imagine farmers or solar operators buying this.