Bluesky user sarcastically questions safety implications
5 Oct 15 10:46 PM · 28d ago · 1 post · 1 source · development 5 of 5
A Bluesky post reacting to the SFGate story sarcastically suggests the project could cause problems, continuing the wave of public skepticism.
“Well, I can totally see why this would totally not cause any problems whatsoever.”
harryseaotter.artReflect Orbital Startup developing orbital sunlight-reflecting mirrorssundogplanets@mastodon.social Mastodon criticharryseaotter.art Bluesky critic
The whole story postscomments the bright band is this development · numbered dots are the others · click one to jump
What people said 24 voices · best of 30 · verbatim
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Well, I can totally see why this would totally not cause any problems whatsoever.
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use it to light up an area Let me introduce you to this thing called an infrared camera You could illuminate an enemy base with painful levels of brightness You absolutely could not, even with tens of thousands of these things focused on one point. It'd take literally hundreds of thousands of 10x10m mirrors to achieve daytime levels of brightness…
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and one for @ sundogplanets "On Saturday night, residents of Lone Pine, a small Eastern Sierra town near Mount Whitney, were baffled by a pair of blinding lights illuminating the desert south of town. In what should have been a pitch-black sky, the beams seemed to come out of nowhere, casting a glow across the landscape." https://www…
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I agree, and that's part of why I'd question the practicality (though said 10m x 10m reflector would have an effective power of 10-30kW, so it's not exactly practical to carry a battery and light that size on e.g. a search helicopter). Of course, the use isn't to see where you're going, but to search large areas as quickly as possible (probably…
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"The company wants to build a network of satellites that reflect sunlight onto specific locations on Earth at night, potentially illuminating everything from city streets to industrial sites." https://www. sfgate.com/tech/article/mount- whitney-reflect-orbital-22478878.php
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While I have other questions about the practicality of the system, I think you're underestimating just how many orders of magnitude human vision adjusts to. For example, humans can navigate and locate themselves just fine under full moonlight, but that full moonlight is only about 1/100000 the intensity of sunlight at high noon. Even 0.01% of…
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I mean, sure it needs to be regulated but I've read other articles about this technology saying that the primary use would be for search and rescue operations where time is critical and having a big light over an area is going to massively improve chances of rescue. Surely that's a good thing?
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I was wondering about the numbers, especially when it comes to the size of the reflector. How big would it have to be to reflect enough light so that the beam would be useful? And at that point, how much force is being exerted on it by the sun? At some point it's going to end up a solar sail.
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Yeah but a torch could also do that. I’ve previously seen claims this type of thing could be used to grow crops in winter or generate power from ground based solar panels at night… There are easier ways to see where you’re going in the dark than to launch giant mirrors into space.
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No, they don't. Sunlight on a 10m x 10m surface is the equivalent of about 10 million candela. The brightest search and rescue flares reach about 90k candela. That doesn't make this practical, but getting the math wrong only hurts your own argument.
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Once the bad actors of the world want world peace, then great we can do it your way. Until then, I'm American and want the US to be the deciding military power in the world. You're crazy if you'd rather have Russia or China have it
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What? There's nothing fundamentally limiting you from focusing sunlight to a spot that can fry people. There's a practical limit based on the aperture size of the collector, but that's not a fundamental principle of visible light.
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Do you suspect that this process works the same when the big mirror is several hundred miles away and moving at orbital velocity, or do you think changing those variables might have an impact?
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I am aware that in our current world strength DOES define authority. But that is not the way it SHOULD be. Especially for a region that belongs to nobody and is infinitely big (space)
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10-30kW? How much of that reaches the ground? Could this be at all used for night time solar? I "love" the idea of distopian big eye casting a searchlight over the earth...
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At least Starlink’s megaconstellation actually does something. You could set the money spent on Reflect’s entire company so far on fire and derive more value from it.
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What math did you use to reach that hundred meters number? And to what hard physical limit are you referring? I strongly suspect you’re misapplying that.
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Oh sure my phone does it also has a built in emergency parachute. Wait what yours doesn't? What kind of phone do you have it must be really old.
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IIRC radio astronomy is particularly affected because of some bands satellites communicate on, and it happens even in the middle of the night
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No it couldn't. Flares are a thing that already exists and are capable of providing more light than these could, at fractions if the cost
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but what if you focus the 10 x 10 to a 0.01 x 0.01 area? you get yourself a frikking space based sniping laser beam. Bond villain stuff.
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Have a look at Prof. Lawler, she writes a lot about this absolute pest for astronomy. And goats.
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Sure, go rewrite human psychology. We're not doing research cooperatively in our own country, how could you possibly do it worldwide
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The inverse square law applies to all point sources. There is no “normal” vs. “weird” light. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
All 5 developments of Reflect Orbital tests ground lights near Mount Whitney… →
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