FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK NOOOOO
@sundogplanets fuck, seriously???
@sundogplanets We‘re not trying to grow food in the domes of Ganymede here. What are these people smoking?
@sundogplanets I am afraid we need to plan for an astronomy in the post-Kessler era 😭
@sundogplanets Peak stupid, peak stupid.
There’s no other use for this actually than a rich morherfucker to shine to his overnight party.
@sundogplanets This is going to require a new form of Luddite.
Hope India or Russia shoots it down with a missile...
@sundogplanets this is the smallest issue, but I hate how every company (or in this case, satellite) that’s named after something from Tolkien is just terrible for society. Palantir, Anduril, Erebor, etc. There’s probably upwards of a dozen by now.
Corporatism on a globalism scale.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
@sundogplanets this is literally Karl Pilkington idea
@sundogplanets Oh FFS…what‘s next?
Breaking news: in a surprising twist Reflect Orbital announced their satellites themselves will not be solar but rather nuclear powered. „By using nuclear power we make sure our totally safe satellites keep working just as long as the sun. Check out our lifetime-subscriptions at 20% off for early investors.“
@sundogplanets the mind boggles, what a crock of an idea
@sundogplanets Hey at least they didn’t paint it tacky gold…
@sundogplanets FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK NOOOOO
@sundogplanets for some reason, national governments seem to think that they have authority to cause trouble in orbit. What happens in orbit affects everyone in some way. Surely doing something as ridiculous as putting a giant mirror in space should have broader international scrutiny?!
@sundogplanets Ok, back of the napkin-style math time. According to NASA, the moon's surface area is roughly (rounded up) 40×10^6 km², or 40×10^12m². These sattelites are 18m×18m or roughly (rounded up) 400m^2. The moon only shows us half of it's surface area, which is half-illuminated on average (the actual amount of light we receive from the moon is a bit less than that due to the moon being present for less of the night when nearer to a full moon, but I'll ignore that for now). So we've got 40e12/40e1/2/2 or 2.5e10, unitless. If we assume the moon reflects 20% as well as those mirrors (this is generous towards the mirrors), we end up with 5e9, or five billion. That's approximately the amount of these mirrors we'd need to build to reflect as much light back to the earth as the moon. Due to the very approximate nature of these only the order of magnitude really matters, but it is still a ridiculous amount and not worth it. After all, adding a second moon to power solar panels would probably not give ROI within the lifespan of the sun.
What are they even trying to do???
@sundogplanets I would never endorse someone going full Contact on this thing's launch vehicle once fully stacked. That would be a terrible and illegal thing to do.
@sundogplanets how the fuck is this under the fcc's purview?
@sundogplanets and of course it’s named after something from JRR Tolkien….
@sundogplanets assume they are only licensed to reflect back to USA??
What's wrong with everyone? Jesus.
@sundogplanets wow that sucks total ass
@sundogplanets I hope this thing gets shot down with some ASAT Rocket by the #Chinese or #Russia, if the #EU doesn't have the balls and this thing isn't in a GSO over the #USA!
@sundogplanets We could band together to aim lasers at these....
@sundogplanets
Mmhh, the Name oft the satellite is from Lord oft the rings. Is Peter Thiel involved in this shit?
@sundogplanets Ah, for a quick Greenland defrost?
And the billionaires push the Earth closer and closer to Trantor.
@sundogplanets This was done before. Suggest you watch the documentary "Die Another Day". Some north korean launched it and when the Americans sent missiles to destroy it, he just aimed his mirror at the missiles and fried them.
The mirror was demoed at some ice castle in Iceland when he benevolently lit up just the castle at night to impress the guests, but then focused mirror to try to fry some british spy out to disable mirror.
Curiious which international body could stop this.
@sundogplanets can I just beat the unholy ribbons and bows out of today? I am so tired.
@sundogplanets turns out a great way to get billionaires sold on renewables is to add a novel source of global warming to the proposition
@sundogplanets I saw this in Die Another Day.
@sundogplanets This is really bad, but I also can't wait for some kid to log in to their system with default admin credentials & vaporize the white house or something with the unmatched power of the sun & continue doing so until the mirror satellites are made illegal, globally, forever.
@sundogplanets We really need the model rocket nerds to start getting into modeling anti-satellite missiles.
@sundogplanets what a bullshit cop out... It falls out of our purview. Time to take a little wider scope assholes
Want some reminders of how fucking terrible this idea is?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/true-cost-solar-power-night-reflect-orbital/
https://darksky.org/news/organizational-statement-reflect-orbital/
Journalists: please write about how dangerous this is.
Lawyers (especially if you're based in the US): please help fight this, it will take legal action now
@sundogplanets I've always had a bad feeling about this idea, but I just tried to sketch out how it could work.
If the satellites are at 625km, that's only a tenth of the radius of the earth. Doesn't that mean the time they'll be in the sun and their target won't is very short? And probably at a very low angle of incidence? I think this means that you'd need hundreds for each target to get anything like steady illumination, particularly at midnight.
And even if they could perfectly reflect the power to earth, it can never be more than the sun's flux on the mirror, which is only 2,290sqm (for their bigger mirrors). The cost of a second 2,290 solar array and a battery to get you through the night is going to many magnitudes less than launching hundreds of complex satellite mirrors into orbit.
So what about illumination, their other "product"? I can't see anyone paying for hundreds of satellites when $5 LED head torches are right there. Even if they could illuminate an entire city (limited flux on the mirror makes that impossible), a city's street lighting system will still be magnitudes less expensive.
All of which convinces me that this will never happen. They may dupe enough investors to launch a test satellite, but the company will go bust five minutes after they release the actual performance stats. At the end of the day, Reflect Orbital is a scam on people who flunked science in school.
@sundogplanets What a dangerous and stupid idea. We humans seem to be hell-bent on becoming extinct!
@sundogplanets
Paging @heiseonline @mho - did you report on that lately?
@sundogplanets where's the problem?
There'll be another startup that'll bring thousands satellites that can bring shadow on earth wherever you want
Obviously you'll have to pay for that
And soon there'll such garbage in the sky that there'll be no more sky, sun, stars
Capitalists with no restraints' dream is a nightmare, it seems, the sooner they'll be stopped the better is
GREAT guess I'm not going to sleep tonight either. Maybe there will be auroras. I need to enjoy the night sky as much as I can now, I guess.
Fuck you, FCC, for approving this. Fuck Reflect Orbital and all the copycats it's going to spawn. Fuck techbros everywhere. Fuck venture capitalists for funding this destructive, useless bullshit.
@sundogplanets I'm so sorry, that's terrible news 🙁
@sundogplanets I just hope some folks hack it and deorbit it!
@sundogplanets [REDACTED] all the people who sponsored this shit.
@sundogplanets Modest Proposal: we get the best Irish scientists together to create a spud cannon capable of hitting objects in low earth orbit and then fire it directly into everyone responsible.
Preferably all standing in a straight line so we don't have to waste a lot of good potatoes.
@sundogplanets it's about as brilliant as getting the first man on the sun ... at night
@sundogplanets guess we will have to shoot it down.
