Startup Says It'll Use Huge Space Mirror to Sell Sunlight During Nighttime
https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-space-mirror-sunlight-nightOpen linkView original on lemmy.world163
Comments73https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-space-mirror-sunlight-nightOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
My startup is going to rent sunlight interceptors that block the extra sunlight sattelite beams that your neighbour rented and what is keeping you awake all night.
🤣🤣 literally the only reaction to this!!
WERNSTROM!!!
Like stealing candy from a baby…
Startup says it wants some more cocaine and wants to know if you know anyone with some more cocaine because some more cocaine would be fuckin' great right now holy shit
I could do a bump, ya know, if you got a little extra.
It's a grift. They came to steal VC money.
This gives me a great idea for a new startup! I'm going to put a giant mirror in space, and you'll need to pay me to turn OFF the sunlight at night.
The people behind that startup are in tears strangling each other wishing they thought of this.
I'd like to have darkness during daytime. I'm not sure I would pay for it, but I'd like it very much.
Slaps roof of curtains
slaps curtains off of the rod
How about these?
Someone watched an old Bond film.
You fucking watch yourself, alright? You're on thin ice.
That was 47 years ago.
Your math is off. It’s closer to 67 years ago. You forgot to carry the 2
It's so dumb uggh. Getting the same power output as the sun would need a MINIMUM surface area of the size of the area on earth it would illuminate.
So say the use case is extending daylight time in Anchorage, Alaska during winter. You would need a mirror that has MINIMUM surface area that of Anchorage. Somehow, it would need to be in an orbit that can reliably reflect light to Anchorage at all points.
Then, it would most likely be in low Earth orbit as putting it higher would require bigger mirrors. However, if u are in LEO, u are also moving incredibly fast. You would thus need an array of these super large mirrors.
All of this for what? Something that an led can do incredibly easily?
Would it not be possible to deflect it through a lens? Couldn't that increase the spread area significantly and because of the contrast at night you would only need a fraction of the light intensity to make an area feel well lit?
You don’t need a lens, just a differently shaped mirror. Their point is just that the light you capture is based on the mirror’s surface area, so if you are selling sunlight-equivalent amounts of light you would need a mirror of equal area to that you are selling. You would not need such a large mirror to sell an area of dimmer light, and you would not need a lens.
What could possibly go wrong?
Certainly not blinding someone stargazing as it reorients.
Okay, luddite. All of the studies resoundingly show that pointing a giant space mirror down toward our collective homes is a great idea.
Modern day startups: lays out a dumb idea.
Valuation: $3B
Startups: The most dystopian shit imaginable
VCs: "You son of a bitch, I'm in!"
Amateur astronomers be like. Cant you just sell me a cloudless night sky instead?
The space mirror is only going to enhance the night sky by better lighting up everything else. And since it's a mirror, you get double the star goodness for whatever you want to see!
You mean zero stars because many nights the moon alone provides enough reflection to blind the sky essentially.
I was an adult before i learned that in actual darkness we can see the andromeda system and the beautiful colors of our own galaxy at large with our naked eye.
I used to think pictures like these required super expansive special camaras… and to be fair i was correct in that assessment. But i failed to realize the ultimate light sensor is simply our own eyes.
The sky is beautiful, its sad how hard it is to catch a real glimpse of it in proper light contrast
I grew up in an area that was fairly dark. Probably somewhere between Bortle class 3 and 4 when I was young.
When I went backpacking in the Rockies, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. The night sky is vast and beautiful, and so full of lights and color. Constellations are hard to make out because there are so many dots to look at, rather than the light being too faint to make out.
New from Ronco! Now you can roast both sides at once!
New startup using cloud seeding tech to create Gatorade rain!
Let's make global warming worse.
Not exactly a new idea. Soviets tried it. Expenses were huge, and something that nobody thought of much back then is that nature would surely found itself hanging upside down...
Znamya Project
Ants can probably tell you this is not a good idea
Wernstrom!
https://youtu.be/sQeXiur38xA?
Oh, that's a little bright
Laugh all you want. But this will be the only thing that saves us during the 2066 vampire wars.
I want to sun my asshole during night hours.
You’re doing it wrong silly, you charge your butthole with moonlight.
Idiot! Just don't invite them in.
Babe wake up Dr Evil just hatched a new scheme
Nobody will invest in this until they throw some "AI" in there.
Just looking at this has me feeling really concerned when it comes to the environment and nocturnal species.
Well unless the mirror is 20km across, they won't notice because the whole idea is insane.
This is like the Romans thinking they are going to build aircraft, we are no way we are near the level of technology required to do this. This is like stage 2 civilization level stuff.
How would it work if it's not that large, though? They could only sell sunlight to people who are within the target radius, but that would be very temporary
Very temporary. If it's going to be very has to be close to the Earth or no one will see it. But if it's close to the Earth it moves so fast there's no point, orbital speed for that altitude is something like 7.8 km per second.
The only way to make this work is to have a truly vast mirror and have it out at geostationary orbit, then angle the mirror as needed to turn on or off the sun but then you're going to be covering a significant area of the planet.
To demonstrate how utterly insane this idea is, this is the sort of thing a civilization would do if it decided it wanted to terraform Mars. Doing this wouldn't be the efforts of a single corporation it would have to be a global effort, we don't currently have the capability of putting something that massive in orbit, we don't have a way to reliably control the mirror, we can't even manufacture a mirrored surface that large, and there have been zero studies on the environmental effects of doing this. It would honestly probably be easier to build a space elevator.
Oh and even if we did do all of this, despite it being impossible, it would only work for a couple of years and then the mirror would get pushed out of orbit by light pressure. The only way to counter that is extremely complicated mirror geometries, and even more mirrors, making the total surface area in the hundreds or even thousands of kilometer range.
It does sound ludicrous...might be better off making a concave mirror so it reflects and intensifies the light...like a giant magnifying glass over an ant hill. Yeah...that's how they should do it. Nothing gonna wrong with that.
Yeah, what you just stated about a concave mirror is not only ludicrous, but would be very destructive to the wilderness and wildlife and probably would be time to contact every wilderness and wildlife defense group to have this so called start-up shut down.
A concave mirror would focus all of the light from a wide area into a single point. What you've created there is a giant space laser. One that only works at night because you need the sun on the opposite side of the Earth to reflect it.
Also all of the previous problems about it needing to be massive, or close to the Earth and moving faster apply.
Oh okay, it's just that I feel attached to the woodlands and find comfort being in the middle of the forest, and seeing what is going on here made me feel really concerned for the environment and nocturnal species. Like, what if you happen to be an animal that is on the prowl or is active at night and all of a sudden its daylight due to sunlight being reflected from a mirror in space?
Icarus (Die Another Day) is real?
I thought they'd be selling the oxygen before they get to the sunlight.
Have you not seen the literally cans of oxygen they now sell? I see them every time I go to my pharmacy
Spaceballs?
Has been a thing since at least 2006.
Scuba divers gotta breathe (a mixture containing) oxygen
There was a Sonic X episode about this concept...
This is horrifying idea
My sleep after this: 📉📉📉
Imagine paying to have light over a rival’s apartment XD
My opps sleep after this: 📉📉📉
Can we also pay to have people cast into utter darkness?
Just like, informationally speaking, my friend was asking.
Luckily it's just an attempt to scam some dumb VCs
Astronomer hate this simple trick to ruin all observations.
This has been debunked like 20x over...
I'd say do some research before posting hogwash, but hey.. it's Ozma.
So kind.
Please, no.
if it was cheap and fast it could be used for trolling, a perfect example of a bad idea that has good applications.