Reflect Orbital, a California startup, has opened applications for anyone who wants to use a satellite with a mirror on it to reflect sunlight to a specific location on Earth after dark. You might be wondering: What?
A few years ago, VICE spoke with Reflect Orbital’s founder and CEO, Ben Nowack, about his plans to generate solar power at night.
“I had an interesting way to solve the real issue with solar power. It’s this unstoppable force,” Nowack said in the interview. “Everybody’s installing so many solar panels everywhere. It’s really a great candidate to power humanity. But sunlight turns off. It’s called nighttime. If you solve that fundamental problem, you fix solar everywhere.”
The company’s orbital mirror is set to launch in 2025, and you can “apply for sunlight” for the next few months. There’s “limited availability,” and already supposedly over 30,000 applications. It really just sounds like a one-time test, though: you only get four minutes for a diameter of 5km. No price is listed.
It takes a special mind to figure out they need to “solve” nighttime.
That said, I wonder if you could use it to screw with people. Would it also have military applications? What if you could light up the area you were about to attack and then come at them out of the dark. Also useful against vampires. Once you start thinking about it, the applications are endless.
Military applications abound. Just have a dozen of them in space and point at one location. There has never been a cheaper way to kill everyone in a 5 km radius.
The psychological impact of having daylight 24/7 would be pretty dire alone.
Also useful against vampires.
This is effectively moonlight, isn’t it? I thought vampires could survive that.
What a horrible, horrible idea. Dear God no.
Can I use it to annoy my neighbor?
You could probably find easier ways of doing that, like weeing through their letterbox.
With a 5km radius, yes, yes you can. All your neighbours. And their neighbours, and most of town.
Ok, so the neighboring town where the rival gang/sports team/even pettier mayor lives.
I made this comment in another thread about this, but this would be an amazing way to screw with someone on a camping trip. Fifteen minutes of daylight would be just enough for someone to get up, get dressed, start going about their morning routine, only for the sun to go out.
Bonus points if they don’t check their watch and notice it’s 2am.