Sunlight 24/7 - Satellite Investment Scam: Reflect Orbital

A few of you have been sending me this idea (and your horror) from company "Reflect Orbital" wanting to reflect sunlight at night. Here's my opinion. What do you think about this dystopian vision and this companies chance of success?

(Ps, hate the idea, hate the company, hate venture capitalism, but not the people that work there.)

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Intro Music - "Moving the Ocean (Aerologic Edit)" by Blastculture.
Outro Music - "Trap Epic" by Simon Jomphe Lepine via Storyblocks

[captainfruitbatify]

Does their tech include a way to punch through clouds? Because we all might be interested in

[bartholomule]

If your neighbor ordered a cluster of satellites to reflect directly on your observatory any time there's a clear sky, you'd probably do more than smile and give them a vegemite sandwich.
I'm thinking that if the satellites aren't geosynchronous, there's pretty much no way this could work at all. You'd be shining all over the place all the time whenever you are transitioning from site to site and dumping a ton of propellent to keep rotating them for the minute or two they are over the target area. Even if it did somehow work, this would cause major issues for nighttime flight paths. Someone clearly didn't think about when something goes wrong and they blind someone driving a car, flying a plane, piloting a massive cargo ship, etc. resulting in crazy levels of damages. The company couldn't survive the legal/financial liability from that.

[jasonpatterson]

This feels like a Thunderf00t video in the making.

[glifencible]

I'm looking for funding to put up satellites that will block the sun, so I can observe during the day. Send me money.

[willemvandebeek]

Even if it was feasible, it would only accelerate climate change even further... we actually need to divert sunlight from Earth during the daytime, instead of the other way around.

[nightmayr]

I've always been late to these types of things, always after there's no one talking about it.

But it feels so good to be here on time.

[JarheadCrayonEater]

Seeing "Vice" gives us all the information we need.

[MartinsVilcins]

The cost of a satellite launch (just the launch, not the cost of the device itself) is quoted to be anywhere between 50 to 400 million USD. For that money you could buy batteries with a power of 800 MWh, or a hundred wind turbines or a mix of the two..

[Grabacr]

That outro of the solar activity should be at least a YT short with a brief description. Very interesting! Thanks for sharing it

[privateprivate]

Reminds me of the work of another Dylan "...Rage rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right." Apologies to Dylan Thomas.

[sk_pigslayer]

I seriously feel like, this is the epitome of waste of human mind. That much efforts can be put on any of the n number of issues we currently have! 😂 Like they can use this same tech to terraform Mars! Thats even more understandable and meaningful.

[marshawilcox]

Beautiful graphic of solar activity at the end. Thanks, Dylan. (Thanks too, for helping me save my money. ;-) )

[Y.Shishani]

The math for power harvested is ridiculous. Noway its going to happen.

[peterpanda]

It just fails on maths - the area of the mirror array has to be ~= the area of the PV array, otherwise you’re spreading out a tiny slice of sunlight over the target area like Vegemite on toast

[BIGVN]

That outtro data visualization is AWESOME!

[carlgough]

As an astrophotographer it's a bad idea. But i'm more against it for the Wildlife. It's bad enough for them at the moment, with the heavily lit beaches in particular sending baby sea turtles in land rather than out to sea. What a terrible idea!

[FosterFarmsOk]

I swear solar companies will try and do anything but come up with a better cheaper battery to store the energy

[cdavidhord]

Incident sunlight is 1366w/m2-you would need one hell of a reflective surface!

[TheRoyMT]

Of all the Dylans I know you are the very best 🤘🏻

[cosmoscarl]

Here's an idea! Let's use large mylar mirrors to block light from hitting the Earth. If it were viable or practical, and I'm not saying it is, it would be much more constructive for humans to cool the Earth than warm it up with a lot of expensive orbital mirrors, beaming sunlight Earthward for the sake of energy generation.