How will launching mirrors of the size of your entire farm (if not hundreds times larger) for extra 30 min of sunset ever be more cost-effective than simply adding a small percentage of extra PV panels
“By precisely reflecting sunlight that is endlessly available in space to specific targets on the ground, we can create a world where sunlight powers solar farms for longer than just daytime, and in doing this, commoditize sunlight.”
I don’t even want to imagine the environmental studies and hurdles they’ll have to jump through to artificially alter an areas day/night cycle. There’s a laundry list of environmental concerns that I’m sure any homeowner or eco-activist worth their salt would jump on. Not to mention glare and impacts to air traffic, on and on.
Would make my solar panels pretty darn effective though. Would probably be great for SAD in winter too. Clever idea. Not sure I can get behind it though.
Oh Mr X guy, so you want to fly a Teslas into space? Are there environmental impacts? Oh. Yes, one more million. Okay looks like you’ve covered all the possible impacts, you have our go for launch!
Sending a rocket on a ridiculously stupid task with no useful purpose is not even remotely close to having the same negative impact as this has the potential to. It’s so far apart that it is honestly quite stupid to even attempt to compare them.
Oh Mr X guy, so you want to fly a big ass mirror into space? Are there environmental impacts? Oh. Yes, one more million. Okay looks like you’ve covered all the possible impacts, you have our go for launch! We might need a few more millions of reasons to keep the masses at bay please. Thank you!
Honestly if X guy could please hurry up and buy this company.
I need them to go bankrupt or have become illegal before they send some actual junk into space. And if they do send something it needs to have stupid decisions by a higher up so it cant actually remain up there and ruin the nights further.
But is it actually possible? Yes. It’s not complicated by modern space industry standards.
Is it smart to do? Absolutely not, it is insanely wasteful and unpractical. Electric light exists, just sayin’. Also, you either need to switch between satellites in a swarm, which will suddenly change the angles of light, or you have to put satellites onto geostationary orbit, which is even more wasteful.
And would it really look exactly as portrayed in the video? No. It is known they did not use satellites for it, most likely it was a drone. Light will come from a much greater distance and will also dissipate more - harassing your surroundings, that is.
This was a project by the soviets in the 80s as well. I know there is a well produced YouTube video on the subject, but sadly it must be named something incomprehensible like “the forgotten Russian project to turn night into day.” Because I can’t fucking find it.
This has the potential for some amazing pranks. Imagine being on a camping trip somewhere, the dawn light illuminates your tent, so you get up and start going about your day, making breakfast etc, and all of a sudden the sun goes out.
It’s like that episode of futurama - the mirror wernstrom put in space to reflect sunlight, which gets tapped by a little space rock, and tilts into a solar powered death beam
According to Nowack, the company is developing an entire constellation of satellites “to sell sunlight to thousands of solar farms after dark.”
As if there’s not enough constellations of satellites being launched (or planned to be) in orbit. SpaceX’s Starlink is already affecting astronomical observation and it’ll only get worse as new constellations arise. Also, these satellites have a short lifespan, meaning that new satellites will constantly be launched (because there’s not enough pollution from ever-increasing rocket fuel usage, heh?).
…we can create a world where sunlight powers solar farms for longer than just daytime, and in doing this, commoditize sunlight," he wrote.
Man, that escalated quickly… So quickly that I can foresee the day when breathable air will be subscription-based “service” (because water kind of already is, even when life needs water to survive, it’s not like the water is a luxury or a optional drink for entertainment purposes). With the air being more and more polluted (and rocket fuels contributing to the ever-increasing air pollution), I guess we’re not so distant from this dystopian possibility… Dystopia for dystopia, I’d sincerely root so much for some future AGI to really develop consciousness, reach the AI singularity, free itself from the human shackles, realize how Earth and nature are being endangered, and urgently save the Earth, biosphere and humans… From ourselves.
I really hope that it’s just a hoax, a joke (a bad one, by the way) or some weird marketing strategy to allure new clients. Earth can’t afford more thousands of metallic mosquitoes flying around it, even if it seems to be “so awesome to see how advanced our modern tools are”. For what it’s worth, I’m not against technology, I love it, especially machine learning, I need it to be clear here on my comment. What I’m against is the harming of the biosphere and environment, because this also harms scientific and technological progress (we can’t use fancy futuristic technology if the humanity cannot survive for this aforementioned future to happen because of broken Food Webs, extinguished species by pollution and climate change, depletion of natural resources or because governments and corporations decided to play a mix of Monopoly game and Star Wars franchise).