This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
i wonder how easy it would be to build something that can reach the orbit and collide with the damn thing to deorbit it, if this nightmare ever becomes reality
This thing will never materialize. It's a vapor-project for stupid people to pour money into.
For as long as there has been humankind, we have gazed up at the night sky, for comfort, for romance, for meditation, for curiosity, etc. It has been a core human experience, evolutionarily hard-wired into our humanity and psyche.
Now these Sociopathic Ferengi are going to steal that experience from every future human being, for profit.
Reminds me of the horrific ending to the movie Hancock (2008)
I'm pretty sure I heard about this a while ago and the math just doesn't math.
Cartoon Country.
A very unserious place with very serious problems.
Naw, the Simpsons was implying a far more useful sun blocking device. What the mirror is has much more impact and is in space.
fcc is not a science based department. they should have no say at all over environmental endeavors
They don't, which is why they can't prohibit this satellite. It meets all their requirements regarding radio interference.
The Satellite should absolutely be stopped, but the FCC isn't the agency to do it.
Does the EPA still exist?
Effectively not
I was just postulating to a friend, that if we built a huge array of solar panels, set out in a pattern not unlike solar sails, and deployed them out in-between the Earth and the Sun, we could block an appreciable amount of heat, which might act as a way to slow down climate change on our planet. Additionally this array could be connected in a grid, making it a huge space station, and energy source, where we could potentially use it as a base to start collecting and mining asteroids.
And then I read about these dumb mother fuckers who want to redirect sunlight back at the earth, making climate change worse, all to replace a couple flood lights? How fucking stupid is the person who brought this to reality? Jesus fucking christ.
Someone needs to read the Dyson Sphere paper: https://archive.org/download/dyson-1960-search-for-artificial-stellar-sources-of-infrared
(The paper was written as a sarcastic take on SETI sinking money into frivolous research of extra-terrestrial intelligence.)
I live in the city man, I'm not going to notice shit.
thankfully the us is the only country that has a sky so only their government’s approval is needed 😁👍
This is an important point, and partly why you're not seeing ads up in the night sky just yet.
Why the fuck is every dystopian industrialist naming their shit after Tolkein? Does an artificial moon designed to fuck the natural order sound like something he would want to endorse?
Like many other things today, Peter's fault
They don't have the literacy / abstract thinking necessary to understand themes and like the 'vibes' of nerdy things being cool now.
These corporate jerks see themselves as Aragorn but in reality they're Wormtongue
Elon likely never read Foundation, and it's frustrating that he's getting credit for it.
I do firmly put that on the people not doing their research, though. We should absolutely be bullying the shit out of people for being disingenuous in this way.
Spotlight, uh, moonlight, uh, eyesore get your fucking aim right 🎶
So uh... Florida made "Geoengineering and Weather Modification Activities" illegal.
So are they going to launch that into space from another state, because one would think launching such out of cape canaveral would be off limits
"Geoengineering and Weather Modification Activities" illegal.
That's only when "the Jews TM" do it. When its capitalism then fine! See they are still spewing carbon into the atmosphere in Florida but they haven't banned internal combustion engines, and they keep burning coal!
If only we had these things called electric lights.
Yah, I can't see anything that could go wrong with this. /s
Emphasis on I can't see anything
There's a lot of fuckery afoot as far as space goes. There are even companies trying to get world governments to allow them to put satellites in space so ads can be beamed into the night sky. I made a video about it if anyone's bored.
The good news is that the scientific community fought back hard against it. You never understand how badass astronomers are until you read up on corporations trying to arse themselves into space.
I support jettisoning corporations into space.
It would be a lot cheaper and easier to just stop burning fossil fuels. We could just take the money for this and invest in renewables.
Sure but capitalists want to own the sun for renewables.
Put up portable solar panels in a park and watch people loose their mind that you are getting something for free (minus cost of panels and battery).
People will literally stand there trying to find a law you are breaking.
Let's beam down more heat! We totally need that on our rapidly heating planet.
Lets send that heat down in a large vertical column piercing the entire way thru the atmosphere!
Birds can cook themselves in it!
Nobody will get rained on near this beam, so less big money tied up in umbrellas!
And think of the tornados that will form!
This thing will create the need for so much progress to undo its effects!
Brilliant!
And while we’re at it let’s just push even more shit above the earth because there’s totally not already a whole bunch of stuff up there.
The illumination would last only a few minutes at one location before the mirror required repointing. Reflect Orbital says the technology could extend solar power production after sunset, illuminate construction areas and assist rescue teams working in darkness.
Flare guns already do this for a lot cheaper. They even come in a choice of colours.
The company has also argued that reflected sunlight could provide temporary lighting without diesel generators or permanent ground infrastructure.
Sure it just requires that you build a giant precision mirror array, launch it into orbit, and then constantly monitor and position it from the ground, but god damn if you won't need a bulky, polluting flashlight ever again.
What an absolute fucking joke of a proposal. Yeah, let's blanket the earth in mirrors so that we can light up some random construction site temporarily.
The Federal Communications Commission approved Reflect Orbital’s plan to launch Eärendil-1, an experimental satellite carrying an 18-meter-wide reflective surface. The mirror would redirect sunlight toward a targeted area after dark, producing a beam roughly five kilometers wide.
The July 9 authorization applies to one demonstration satellite, not the enormous constellation the California company eventually hopes to build. Reflect Orbital has described plans for more than 50,000 mirrors by 2035, creating what it calls “sunlight on demand.”
Why is the FCC approving anything related to space?
To make it look like it went through some kind of evaluation done by experts, instead trump just saying it is ok after a payment.
Yes, because the one thing we really need is more heat on earth.
Oh not this again. I agree the it sets a stupid precedent but the act itself is irrelevant.
Far apart from the fact that it's only going to be over any given area of the earth for about a minute tops, but also pointless because it's only 18 m wide, so you won't be paying for sunlight, you'll be paying for a random spec in the sky to be switched on.
This is all a giant con where they're trying to get a bunch of investment money from idiots that don't know basic physics but do have a lot of money. I'd actually put a reasonable amount of money on this never actually launching.
