Re: OT: Surely there's an SF story with this.....

On 9/2/2024 12:01 PM, Paul S Person wrote:

On Sun, 1 Sep 2024 14:16:07 -0400, Cryptoengineer
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
 <snip-a-bit>

The Soviets did try a 20 meter mirror, which very
briefly provided light on a rapidly moving 5km spot
on the ground, equivalent to 'several full moons'.
>
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-turned-night-into-day/
>
So, yes, maybe you could provide a light with some usefulness
for a few minutes, if the mirror was steered to point to one
spot. Reflect Orbitals claim is that they can provide
light for 4 minutes at a time.
>
The ISS can be in sight for as long as 6.5 minutes on a pass, so
RO's mirrors must be lower. That's good for being bright, but also
means they're subject to a lot of drag from remnant traces of
atmosphere, and will need to either have propulsion to keep on
station, or be replaced frequently.

 If they were far enough out, they would be over the same spot for a
lot longer than that. Have to be a /really/ big mirror, though.
 

The suggestion to use RO's mirrors to power solar plants is a
total non-starter. The mirror can't deliver more light than
falls on it, and if its spread over several kilometers on the
ground, its just not bright enough to do anything useful, quite
aside from the idea that powering one for less than 5 minutes
has a use case.
>
Finally, you'd piss off every astronomer and stargazer on Earth.

 IIRC, Musk's satellite clouds have already done that.

Yes, and Starlink has gone to considerable effort to
mitigate the problem, with significant (but not total)
success.
The constellation the Chinese are starting to put up
looks like very bad news, though.
pt