FCC Greenlights New Orbiting Mirrors That Could Disrupt Night Skies
(redstate.com)
These people are STUPID!
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The FCC is allowing ONE mirror satellite in low earth orbit as a test, but the company envisions thousands of them in the future if it is proven to work.
The Eärendil 60 foot diameter mirror will concentrate sunlight onto specific locations on Earth for the purpose of testing increased solar power generation. At night, it will appear as a very bright moving star, nearly equal to Venus in brightness and a little brighter than the International Space Station.
I suggest a duplicate technology be launched... a 60 foot diameter magnifying glass to be in a slightly lower Earth orbit than the mirror. Sunlight reflected by the mirror can go through the large magnifying glass... with the superheated light beam focused on the FCC headquarters who authorized the giant mirror in the first place.
Just my 2-cents.
For me, the link went to an article behind a paywall, so I will rely on your account. All the mirror can do is reflect an image of the sun. But, if we assume (extremely generously) that the mirror is only 100 km from any ground site, it will have an angular diameter about 1/52 of that of the Sun. Which means it will reflect only 1/2690th of the sun's area (about 0.037 percent). All that trouble to produce only a visual annoyance? (The f-number for such a system would be no better than f/5,555, so I don't see it as being much of a "concentrator".)
It's not even a new idea. Krafft Ehrike proposed "solettas", circa 1970, mirrors of MUCH greater size, stemming from Hermann Oberth's ideas of the 1920s. (Hard to find information on solettas. Here is a link to an abstract of one of Ehricke's papers on the subject: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0094576579900031). I was privileged to meet and chat with Ehricke several times in the 1970s. He was quite a rousing character. As a boy, I built plastic models of the things he was dreaming up when he was at Convair.
That's a nickle these days.
I round up for great ideas.....
I can imagine a very large lightweight mirror in space which is capable of focusing concentrated solar energy onto any spot on the earth. Nice weapon, you got there. Not that anybody would do that, though.........Trust us.....
So we’re all ants under the magnifying glass of a 10 yo.
Exactly!!!
HAARP enters the chat.....
Not even remotely.
Smart scientists would reverse this and start working on a Dyson Sphere instead. Why reflect the sun when we could freely and easily capture it's energy and use that unshutoffable power?
I will say this about Dyson.
They do suck like no other....😉
Using the reflected light to aim at earth based solar farms is one of the things they are planning to test. They expect to be able to light up an area ~2 mile diameter. In theory, I don't see any reason why this same technology could not be aimed at other object in space as well.
Oh, good grief! What a waste of money and have they done research on the harm those mirrors may cause?
Does God ever strike anyone down anymore for their sheer stupidity? That is needed here.
What does the FCC have to do with space mirrors?