It sounds like something a Bond villain would think up. A startup wants to put giant mirrors into space to reflect sunlight back toward the Earth at night. Why would someone want to do this? To disturb the sleep of everyone on the “dark side” of the planet? No, but that would happen. To help plants grow faster and feed more people? Nope. It’s to keep giant solar power installations going after the sun goes down. This is a stupid, harmful idea, and we will explain why.
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Oh come on!! No sinking trees in the arctic to sequester carbon AND no space mirrors. This is just uncivil!
(Will listen to podcast later, but the flaws are obvious. Power of sunlight minus power lost in atmosphere minus power lost in solar panel reflection and conversion to electricity minus losses converting DC-to-AC minus distribution to customers equals almost no benefit delivered for one of the most expensive types of project humans can execute.)
From the above article:
“This is a stupid, harmful idea, and we will explain why.”
I’ll offer this little bit of math, coupled with some engineering commentary, to support the assertion of “stupid idea”.
At Earth’s surface, the full disk of the Sun subtends an angle of about 0.53 degrees. In terms of equivalent area as a function of altitude for reflective planar mirrors orbiting Earth and assuming insignificant-shadowing of such orbiting mirrors by Earth-eclipses, we have the following circular mirror area equivalents that equal 0.53 degrees subtended angle:
altitude = 1,000 km: total mirror area = 67 km^2
altitude = 5,000 km: total mirror area = 1,700 km^2
altitude = 10,000 km: total mirror area = 6,700 km^2
altitude = 20,000 km: total mirror area = 27,000 km^2
altitude = 35,800 km (geosynchronous): total mirror area = 86,000 km^2
And the above figures are based on the mirror being mostly normal to both Sun and Earth . . . the areas would of course be significntly higher for Sun-mirror-Earth angles greater than about 30 degrees due to cosine dependence.
We currently have NO TECHNOLOGY that can deploy even a 10 km^2 area planar reflective surface into Earth orbit and keep it oriented reflectively Sun-to-Earth as that angular relationship changes continuously.
Cost of producing and launching any such hypothetical mirrors into Earth orbit to the extent of providing even a 0.001% increase in sunlight averaged over 24 hours? . . . don’t ask!
I’m guessing that the folks pushing this idea are assuming that the mirror will continue to be planar. How much will it weigh to be sufficiently rigid? How will each segment launched be attached to the a-building mirror once on orbit? Is there some sort of upper stage to propel and guide the new segment from orbital insertion to rendezvous, or does the whole idea depend on simultaneous development of an orbiting space tug with lots of propellant?
I know, these are pesky little issues to be resolved by some engineering.
Rocket Science is easy, Rocket Engineering is hard.
Since orbiting spacecraft are in “continuous free-fall”, the mirror and its supporting structure are imagined to have very lightweight composition . . . something along the lines of mil-or-so-thick aluminized Mylar stretched tight across a thin wire or narrow tube supporting framework, such as the sun shade design used on the James Webb Space Telescope. Even though this concept minimizes the weight associated with large area mirrors (them being nothing like glass mirrors used in telescopes or for concentrating sunlight in solar thermal plants), it has the attendant problems of:
a) having to be launched in a highly compressed package to fit within a launch vehicle’s payload shroud volume and to also incorporate the mechanism(s) for subsequent ejecting, “unfolding”, and fully tensioning the mirror during on-orbit deployment so as to make it become essentially planar over hundreds to thousands of square kilometers of area, and
b) how to provide both torque and station keeping propulsion to such a large flimsy satellite area to enable sun-Earth tracking and orbital maintenance without at the same time causing the surface to become non-planar. A particular problem with such a large deployed surface area is that sunlight (in addition to the solar wind) will create continuous pressure forces that must be counteracted . . . refer to concepts for “solar sail” spacecraft propulsion.
Just the recognition of providing the long-term required ACS and delta-V propulsion for such mirrors-in-space boggles the mind.
I’m thinking a nice bit of swag and funding is the actual goal. Years and years of it. Maybe BILL has a few extra sheckles around that he’s not using on lawyers.
How about a frcking giant space mirror to sunzap old man winter.
Musk could orbit millions of these mirrors to heat and/or cool directly.
It could be like the “buy-a-brick” charity sidewalk campaigns where you donate to the satellite project and get your name on the back of a mirror.
Miliband is looking at this seriously and has a few £m put aside to invest.
https://www.borntoengineer.com/uk-national-grid-partners-with-space-solar-to-test-revolutionary-grid-technology
Its not April 1st, just seems it every day.
Not only will it not work it will play havoc with nocturnal wildlife.
Actually one of my first thoughts. Mao banned sparrows and 50 million people starved. No extrapolation is ever done by these nutters so to me it’s all about the grants and investment swag.
Daylight Savings Time is bad enough.
But really, it will never happen from sheer costs.
25 years ago I wrote a sci-fi story about using aimable space mirrors to warm up high latitude land masses as a way of fending off the only actual climate danger: global cooling.
The quick and dirty way to forestall cooling will be to dot the great white north with soot-maximizing coal-electric plants. Just keep painting the snow and ice black so it absorbs more sunlight and melts.
Otherwise the growing snow and ice reflect more and more sunlight back into space, accelerating until WHOMP, glaciation encases half the planet in ice a mile thick.
Mirrors might also be doable, now that Elon is bringing the cost of putting things in orbit way down.
The fun part of the story was how the eco-lunatics freaked out about the additional sunlight, lol. Don’t worry lunatics, we won’t do it with the goal of causing global warming until glaciation has clearly commenced.
Until then we will just do it to serve the market for more sunlight in northern climes, haha.
Why did this movie come to mind?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius
If a mirror is to add light to an individual solar installation on the ground it’s going to need to be at the 24 hour synchronous height, and there’s already a bunch of satellites and assorted ‘junk’ in that orbit. Not too flamin’ good. A mylar reflector drifting in front of say a Dish TV satellite? (Memories of watching Sputnik every 90 minutes at a much lower height.)