Why not just put up a Moonlight Tower?

Might be fun for novelty on a concert venue or ball game, but I can’t imagine it’d be economical for solar farms.

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.

Scientists: Climate change is happening.

Some billionaires: Let’s make a giant parasol in space.

This guy: How about more sun?

Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun . . .

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

This is this year’s single biggest understatement

Maybe build that Stanford torus station instead? It’ll be expensive initially, but we can send some people to live there.

James Bond death ray time :)

Can we just for a minute stop fucking around in space? It’s getting annoying

How long until the free version of Sun is cancelled?

I watched a video yesterday about the laser range finder on a tank. The interesting thing is that at long enough ranges, the laser expands into a cone that may be bigger than the target and give inaccurate readings.

Anyway, I look forward to this totally real and feasible technology.

Reflect Orbital is a California-based startup

Aight that’s where i stop.

“‘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.’”

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).

Even if it were actually doable, this a dumbass idea. It doesn’t take a genius to recognix that night/darkness are necessary for life and that we already have enough environmental problems related to artificial light pollution.