68slug
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The Znamya with a 20 metre wide reflector produced moonlight level sun about 3 miles wide. Pretty sure we’d need a little bit more than moonlight level brightness to effectively use solar at night.
I’m no engineer, but maybe we should be investing in storage systems rather than f’ing everyone’s night. Pretty sure BYD in china has some decent storage solutions (BYD battery tech made Teslas viable). The sun produces more energy than we can use in the day.
https://futurism.com/space/astronomers-horrified-mirror-satellite-reflects-sunlight
JohnWickdidnothingwrong
Yes, that's what we need, more thermal energy in our system. This is a great idea.
Defcon2
thatlamer
Huh, someone really heard "space mirrors" and decided it needed to exist in the stupider direction. Instead of combating sunlight during the day to help with temperatures by blocking some sunlight, lets disrupt biorhythms, astronomy, and heat the cooling side back up too. All so we don't have to spend a third the total cost of the satellite development and launches on a nuclear power plant, hydro, geothermal, or wind to make up the energy difference.
CinnamonJ
You can't block enough sunlight to cool the earth with space based mirrors, thats a complete non-starter.
IHateTransphobes
I wouldn't say CAN'T, but it would take mining and refining aluminum from the moon in order not to be insanely expensive. We don't have that technology yet so, as you said, it's a non-starter.
RiotFixxer
BYD and CATL with their grid sodium battery are already doing it.
We blame china for pollution, but they are the only one that are putting money to actively solve the problem.
I don't like that they are doing it for nationalistic purposes instead of ecological ones, but the result will be good nonetheless.
68slug
Ya regardless of their motivations, China is actually out there leading the way in clean energy solutions.
RiotFixxer
For the ones that are downvoting us: I understand why you don't like china, i don't like them too.
Ethno-nationalism is an ideology that will destroy the world, and literal nazism at work.
But the technical facts are under the sun and unequivocable.
Psionickitten
Humans: fucking things up since we came into existence.
GoddessPurpleFrost
We're just one massive laser away from someone drawing a giant penis on the moon.
68slug
I’d be mad about it, but my inner 11 year old would still laugh.
FelonyRaptor
Nah, let's just make night in to day? I mean what could go wrong?
It's not like almost all life on this planet has evolved with and depends on the circadian rhythm, right?
Psionickitten
If you're not making money for billionaires 24/7 what could there possibly be to life?
FelonyRaptor
Even the early philosophers in ancient Greece were thinking about this and didn't come up with anything so this is the way it is.
spontaneous9
"That's no moon."
misterCT
It’s moon moon
Myothercarisadelorean
ChetinBey
Nice
spontaneous9
B0ardski
this is every bit as stupid as the space elevator
OperatorWay
Endocrom
This guy gets it.
YesiRealizeThisWasAlongTimeAgo
Wernstrom!
OneMoreLime
Fucking shoot that shit down and see if anyone has the nerve to get mad.
BosunMark
Bruh.. thats obviously a jewish space laser..
68slug
Wait wait wait. Solar power AND weather control in one tidy package … I might get onboard with this after all
Krackajak78
*fuck good for solar farms
icannotthinkofanyrationalname
The news of this really pissed me off. Who the fuck do they think they are taking away the natural order of darkness at night? That is going to totally fuck up the biosphere. Idiots. Fucking idiots.
notdavis
this is the startup that was going on a tedtalk and was like "it's not very expensive, a couple thousand dollars an hour"
ParaBellumOutfitters
BYD is as squirrelly as Tesla/Musk, but they do have some promising Sodium Ion tech coming out imminently that should be just the thing for BESS' grid scale (battery banks)
Borax
Well if Farnsworth and Wernstrom couldn't make it work, it won't
superman0000
You’d think the scared ones are the non astronomers who see that at night not having a clue what it is.
ShinksAvoHazaar
And the first debris field it passes or the micrometeor shower that swings through will wreck it. What’s the point of this anyway?
valen00
Why would a pinhole in a mylar mirror wreck it? It'd gradually loose efficiency sure but it's not like they are putting a big sheet of glass up there. Like I don't think it's inherently a good idea. I suspect the people funding it probably have weapons development in mind. But making up wrong stuff to say it's bad is also bad.
duktayp
Also: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-advertising-draws-astronomers-opposition/
68slug
Idk. We’ll hit Kessler Syndrome before that happens. Or during. Thanks to Space X, now being about 70% of our low earth satellites, and now requiring a new numbering system for tracking them - we’re almost there. We did it everyone!
itrytoonlysaypositivethings
Oh that's wonderfully dystopian, no more night for anyone ever.
ThemanknownasBehm
Isnt that what Batman used to save Gotham from Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin?
InspectorA5
Gonna buy a bunch of green lasers and bounce off the satellite to the ground. Blind people hundreds of miles away and never be caught. Mwahahahaha.
N,o Mr Bond. I expect you to die.
RyanH42
They tried this in Futurama. It didn't work.
69Voltage
Curious what part of the world they think will be ok with 27/7 daylight.
gablestout
69Voltage
Ouch!
BatmanAndCradleRobin
It would actually be really useful during disasters at night, but like thats gonna be edge case no one would build this for that.
TheDildoOfConsequences
That's a cute idea, but disasters mostly happen to poor people.
alcamar
The poor part, which will be mostly just wherever they aren't.
20rooster
Also how do we opt out of this Monty Burns level bullshit.
kaneinencanto
To be fair, Burns was doing the opposite.
eion85
The part of the world covered in a solar power plant, or perhaps a region needing a longer growing season.
But really if you wanted to beam power down you'd build orbital solar panel stations and beam it down as microwaves. That was considered as one job for the Space Transportation System (Space Shuttle).
FlurfMacGurf2
lol, a science project of mine in high school used this premise for colonizing the moon. The major problem with using it on Earth, as far as my high school research went, was for the microwaves to carry enough power to be worth while the beam would vaporize everything in its path to the ground including dust and clouds and birds.
valen00
I think your highschool project could have done with some work.
People who suggest doing orbital solar power stations generally use longer wavelengths aimed at large rectanna arrays so the coupling to anything around and the actual power density are quite low.
Actually making a microwave focused enough to have that ability over that range is almost precluded by the physics of focusing it until you are getting into very short wavelengths, at which point, the mirror is much easier.
myeyesthegogglesdonothing
I don't need sunlight at night but I'd hear arguments for the 27 hour day...
Callipygius
Dude I'd pay for 3 extra hours
69Voltage
🤣
68slug
The article doesn’t explicitly say where - but it’s the FCC approving it, so I’m guessing somewhere in America. But, really, anywhere is going to suck pretty hard.
69Voltage
Let the lawsuits begin
somerando76879
Fcc is approving communcation with it, to be specific.
rhalm
I wouldn't say it's going to suck anywhere. Honestly, there's plenty of places and people that would prefer working in the daylight when they haven't seen it since they work graveyard shifts. I just doubt it's overall going to be worthwhile in terms of resources. Unless it replaces some of the massive, expensive, energy intensive lights that would otherwise be used to illuminate a place.
eion85
US government has to license any launches from the US period
cameloDancer
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1OTNtcTZ1MHp5aXc5YXNsbjE5YWUxcncyMzR4MG12cW4wNGo3aG1yeSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3RyZW5kaW5nJmN0PWc/H5C8CevNMbpBqNqFjl/200w.webp
darkninja2992
"More daylight hours, more time for work" they say two days before the sleep deprived masses are tearing down the front gates
elbowdeepinawhateverthatis
No, see, that’s the genius, the masses are TOO sleep deprived to tear at the gates!
darkninja2992
You're too sleep deprived for rationality well before you're too sleep deprived to function physically
elbowdeepinawhateverthatis
You don’t know me! I’m too sleep deprived for EITHER!
anwyl42
It's supposed to be focused light aimed at solar plants, if you believe the ad copy.
LenneSamunai
Anything basically who is willing to pay for it. Solar plants, farmers, search and rescue. But also to light up city's at night environmental friendly(read, not using fossil fuels). That was in my countries news coverage
sanri0
Oh boy, I must be tired as I read your comment and thought, “aren’t all plants solar plants?” 🌱
MaddMatter
Now I have to look into carnivorous plants and their ability to photosynthesize in order to scratch an itch.
Firestar002
Technically… yes…. XD
ThisOneKid
It took me reading your comment to realize that's not what they meant
68slug
Not exactly focused with their claimed 9 square mile beam. But I suppose focused is relative.
Vesorias
Do you know how tiny 9 miles is compared to the earth?
eion85
Large solar power plants would easily cover that area.
KingYinzer
At least one already does, at about 10 square miles: https://constructionreviewonline.com/largest-solar-power-project-in-us-history-to-be-constructed-in-nevada/
Z0op
Ooh! The microwave power plant from simcity 2000 accompanied by its fun disaster scenario when it misfires and sets your city on fire, fun!
Firestar002
I gotta reinstall that and play it again. Only way I ever made money was by making a gigantic landfill and selling its usage to neighboring cities.
IHateTransphobes
Landfills and neighbor deals were introduced in 3000.
Firestar002
No. I’m fairly certain 2000 had them too. Like 90%?
ExaDeuce
Custom map, giant mountain covered in waterfalls on the side. Magic infinite water supply for hydroelectric plants, no pollution!
hogeyegrex
“The sun produces more energy than we can use during the day.”
For now. Give it about 400 years at the rate we’re going and we’ll (humans) be consuming the equivalent of all the energy the sun imparts to earth. In 1400 years, we’ll be consuming energy equivalent to the entire output of the sun. 2500, and it’ll be the equivalent of the entire galaxy.
“Growth” is not a sustainable goal.
hogeyegrex
We know what humanity was doing 2500 years ago. I think I can say I know what we won’t be doing 2500 years hence.
68slug
We don’t have 400 years. Terminator is 2029.
OnFridaysWeWearBeskar
That's going to fuck up animals of the four legged variety that use night/dusk/dawn for their activity.
Smidge204
"..we’d need a little bit more than moonlight level brightness [to] use solar at night." 1) You'd be wrong, 2) It's a test, 3) Still dumb.
68slug
I like that you quietly called me out but gently supported me at the same time.
valen00
I mean you need fairly intense light for conventional photovoltaics to make meaningful power. Even a worst case cloudy day with 10,000lux will put your solar panels down to a few % of their full sun yield. Full moon is like 0.3 lux on a good day? Did you have something else in mind?
Evenmoreuselessname
Well, it says they want to launch 50,000 larger versions, so I guess if they all aim at the same spot... I'd figure the fossil fuel "benefit" of this would be replacing night lighting with a bright full moon anytime, but I guess they're going for solar generation?
valen00
guy said it was wrong to say you need more than moonlight level brightness to use solar at night. As far as I'm aware you need quite a lot of light for PV to work meaningfully.
Evenmoreuselessname
You do, I was just joking they would be able to aim 50k (or even launch that many) of these things at at the same target.
valen00
I doubt the 50K of them thing. However fewer larger ones are fairly plausible IMO but again, it needs actual numbers to be run. This thing doesn't violate any laws of physics and keeping solar panels running even a few more hours is worth a lot of battery mass. But scoffing and calling stuff dumb is much more fun.
Hmuda
First: use batteries you fuckwits.
Second: sure, let's blast even more sunlight onto the surface during the time when things should be cooling down...to combat climate change. GENIUS!
demosteness
Second should be first
demosteness
That comment being downvotes explains why we’re going extinct.
valen00
I mean.... Batteries have an environmental impact to produce and a limited supply of capacity to make.
The impact of adding more sun could well be offset from the reduction in fossil fuel plants that often run in the evenings to cover peak.
If you could aim these at existing solar farms and get solar production for a few hours after local sunset and do so in the near term the climate impact could well be significant.
I say this as someone who owns an EV and house battery+solar.
baadf00d
It's pretty telling that we don't have companies building massive battery arrays everywhere despite there being huge, predictable, movement in the energy price market. Sometimes you even get paid to pull energy from the network, 100% real. People were told to please not turn everything on to take advantage of this because the net can't handle it.
Current batteries are not the solution. Show me the math if you think they do. We need magic batteries or nuclear, and we need it 10 years ago.
dohcohv
Launching the reflectors into space also takes a LOT of resources and most rocket fuels produce an incredible amount of CO2.
dohcohv
Something like a Falcon 9 heavy uses 1200 tons of fuel to launch 50 tons of equipment into LEO on an orbit where it won't last that long. That is going to take an incredible amount of time to counteract with a space mirror that the satellite might not last for because if anything fails, you can't just go fix it like you can with a battery on the ground.
valen00
For a 10MW solar farm that 1200 tonnes is ~120 hours of operation replacing a coal plant.
So it'd pay for itself in a month if they extended the solar production by 4 hours a day into evening peak.
If you assumed 5 years of operation which is not uncommon for LEO satellites it comes out a fair way in front. Ball park numbers to do the same with batteries is first build ~30% more solar panels, then spend ~$20M on batteries the construction of which emits ~2500 tonnes of CO2. Also, it's not/
valen00
one satellite to one solar farm they would hit multiple as they pass around the earth. I know a little something about space stuff, I have a degree in space science. This project isn't "scoff it's so dumb" it's "you need to actually do maths" and also there aren't enough batteries currently. Further, humanity can do more than one thing at a time. These guys can do this thing that could immediately boost existing solar farms. While also building more batteries.
RetrogradeLlama
The Chinese have a plan to gather solar energy at the satellite and beam it back to earth by microwave transmission.
Radix865
I think simcity 2000 had a microwave power plant that worked like that? But it had a chance that the beam "missed" and hit the city.
Nuttsy
There's docs and outlines for that going at least Shuttle Development Era.
Once it turned out the shuttle is gonna be way more expensive than expected to run, some of those petered out, others latched onto far larger concept planes.
68slug
I can get behind that. Seems a lot less intrusive than turning the lights on in the middle of the night.
Voojagig
Right up until the microwave beam doesn't hit it's collector.
HenryLongfellowIII
Yes a horrible death ray cutting a swath of death across middle America /s. In actual fact the realistic microwave energy densities at the earth's surface would be ~1kW/m^2, so similar to sunlight, and would have little effect. I don't think it's practical in the foreseeable future for other reasons (efficiency of conversions DC-microwave and rectennas being a big one, and actual - not projected magic- launch costs). The data centers in space actually makes more sense from that viewpoint.
HenryLongfellowIII
The data centers in space _might_ make sense if electricity was a big part of the operating cost. However the analysis I've seen is that electricity is <10% of operating costs, with amortized server costs by far dominating (replaced every few years). They would also be uniquely vulnerable - data centers are vital infrastructure as well as being dual use military equipment- one retrograde payload of ball bearings could create a massive cascading failure.
breadedfishstrip
Also the whole heat being harder to dissipate in space than in atmosphere thing
lechante
Always worked in simcity...
neptix
Totally and perfectly accurate beam :)
lechante
And safe!
eion85
Not a new concept.
I think it's probably more practical to build a band of solar panels on the moon that capture sunlight on the light side and beam it back to relay stations in LEO from the near side.
Most of the materials you need to make solar panels are already on the moon.
rhalm
Where are you getting that idea from? The moon would be a terrible place to beam electricity from due to its distance and the difficulty in beaming it precisely enough that it could transfer electricity on Earth. And just harvesting moon materials is way off from concept, let alone execution.
eion85
https://www.shimz.co.jp/en/topics/dream/content02/
Carl99
The details of moon mining where worked out decades ago. The real problem has allways been the launch costs were so extreme no one outside of a national government could do it from a cost PoV.
valen00
TBF some plans I have seen suggested for it were to go to the moon, mine the materials for the panels there, then you can use rail gun type launchers to fire the stuff into geosynch orbit around earth for the actual power satellites.
Saves you a whole bunch of launches and the environmental impact (and cost) that goes along with them. Actually doing mining and processing on the moon is of course another problem to solve first. But you have many of those to do space solar anyway.
FermentTheRich3000
Or lightning. That would be a good thing...
rhalm
It would be. Same if we could use wind turbines to capture the energy of a hurricane. Here's the problem with both of those ideas: they aren't realistic or practical.
Z0op
Ayup, even if could make systems rugged enough to handle the sudden enormous bursts of energy, such a thing wouldnt be exactly mobile, and lightning/hurricanes have a tendency to show up wherever they well please, sadly, not neatly contained within the area where one would be capturing the energy.
So lets make a lightning collector and *hope* it gets struck the way we want it to…
PhailRaptor
If we have the tech to actually accomplish that, it's the best way to do solar. No pesky atmosphere and less magnetic field to obstruct the incoming light, doesn't take anywhere near the same land area for far higher production. Gets around transmission loss issues at ground level by distributing receiving sites. Just don't cook the planet.
valen00
The magnetic field of the earth doesn't affect the light. The atmosphere does a bit.
The main issue is needing to launch millions of tonnes of solar panels and the environmental impact of doing so being probably non negligible and also unknown.
TheWombatStrikesAgain
Not even a new idea. Problem is all it takes to weaponise it is inserting different coordinates.
valen00
Microwave solar power satellites aren't that easy to weaponise as a heat beam, they want to run at relatively low wavelengths and couple to large antenna arrays on earth. You can't focus those sorts of wavelengths into a "spot" tight enough to do more than slightly raise the temperature of a few square km even if you managed to actually couple your RF into that location without a dedicated antenna to catch it. A mirror however is more amenable to being a weapon.
rhalm
An idea and a plan are different things. Electricity was an idea thousands of years ago. It took thousands of years for it to be harnessed in a usable way. Same with extra-planetary energy delivery systems.
And being weaponized is hardly an issue when it would be very easy to pinpoint where it came from and where it went. ICBMs are much more efficient than having some space mirror laser.
SalamanderBSC
So not new that I remember back in the 1990's, there was an anime that had it as a chekhov's gun. Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040.
It even got taken over by an evil AI and used as a weapon too... so that's 'fun' that we're already ahead of schedule.
Z0op
Simcity 2000 has it literally as one of the disaster scenarios
kubi
Also Gundam 00, though the energy deliver was never used directly as a weapon. Now to power a superweapon is another story.