Baffling that the FCC is the agency to approve such a thing.
FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
141–150 of 164 posts
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#142How are the economics of this idea meant to be viable? The proposed business model is to park hundreds of millions to billion dollars of satellites in orbit, plus the costs to maintain and operate them, to meet the goal of selective area illumination and solar power. Ignoring the issue of cloud cover, which still seems to be an impediment. That's going to need to directly compete with terrestrial energy storage techn…
Its obviously just a way to separate investors from their cash.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#143So we've got this problem of the atmosphere trapping too much heat from solar radiation hitting the surface and the plan is to increase the amount of solar radiation hitting the surface?
You could turn the mirrors around and reflect sunlight away from the planet. That might be useful. Imagine using it during a heatwave.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Illuminating a solar farm for 24 hour power generation?
Is it possible it can deliver anywhere near enough solar energy to make this economically viable? It's not going to be full daylight, is it?
Absolutely impossible to do that in any viable sense.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#145Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#146So we've got this problem of the atmosphere trapping too much heat from solar radiation hitting the surface and the plan is to increase the amount of solar radiation hitting the surface?
You could turn the mirrors around and reflect sunlight away from the planet. That might be useful. Imagine using it during a heatwave.
True, deny sunlight to whomever, also sounds dystopian
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except if the reflectors are shaped for wide area illumination, then their focal distance is probably nowhere near the distance from the satellites to the earth’s surface. So I don’t think is any “single point” to be had. Heck, I haven’t done the math or anything but I bet even if you did instead use parabolic reflectors that were tuned to focus at the earth’s surface, it would still be very difficult to keep them ai…
I don't think these things start out looking like a weapons. Wrong reflector shape? It could just be proving out other aspects. It could also be completely innocent too, but I don't think this is quite conspiracy level thinking.
I wasn’t speculating on people’s motives; I was speculating on whether the idea is feasible. I don’t think that it is.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
If it works it could reduce the electricity price in the evenings and mornings.
Now if I take the french grid example that I know best, for the past 7 days the usual spot price is around 100 to 150€/MWh but between 9am to 6 pm it is greatly reduced due to solar production, frequently down to 0 like today (current heatwave, lots of sun). And today between 1 and 3pm we had up to 5GW of solar production being curtailed. That is on top of the nuclear plants already reducing their output by up to 8GW around noon to accommodate solar power. Hydraulic storage was also running but tops at ~3GW.
That is to say there's already unused energy during the day, in theory, if you had a MWh battery you could have charged it for free today (sometimes even been paid to do so) and earned 100€ a few hours later.
One thing I see coming (albeit slowly) is EV cars phasing out IC engines, that once plugged on the grid with their big batteries could be a good distributed storage solution: they recharge during the day whenever the price is low and smooth out the expensive peaks when possible.
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> relatively easy to redesign as weapons There is a fiction I've read years ago that mentioned satellites becoming makeshift weapons by overheating exposed objects (think reactors, gas trucks, oil refineries) by acting as a solar furnace [1] via mirrors. Not sure/don't recall how it deals with practical issues such as clouds and distance/intensity, but good enough for a story I guess. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
You can't focus sunlight at the satellite distances. And this is a fundamental problem, the focal distance varies for each wavelength so your focus point will be smeared. You need monochromatic light for that (a laser). Edit: and also don't forget that the Sun is not a point source and has an appreciable angular size, further making it impossible to focus it with a reasonably-sized lens or mirror.
I see your point for lenses but how would that happen with mirrors?
Re: FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
#150In the US, people are going to shoot at it with guns. Bullets that go straight up? Probably not lethal when it falls back to the ground, tumbling and lacking ballistic energy, but bullets that follows a ballistic trajectory are going to hit with force. What could posssibly go wrong?