posted in Technology

sanitation@sanitation@lemmy.today

U.S. FCC approves giant space mirror to deliver 'sunlight on demand,' but what are the legal implications?

www.cbc.ca/news/science/reflect-orbital-approval-fcc-9.7287535
CBCANALYSIS | U.S. FCC approves giant space mirror to deliver 'sunlight on demand,' but what are the legal implications? | CBC NewsDespite hundreds of public comments opposing a giant space mirror that would shine light roughly five kilometres wide, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has given it the green light. What could this mean for Canadians?
yesman@yesman@lemmy.world

Replying to @⁨sanitation@lemmy.today⁩

This isn’t a weapon, and probably won’t work as intended either.

“Space lasers” don’t work over long distances because the light spreads out. (inverse square law) A pinpoint laser is almost 2m wide when pointed at a low flying aircraft.

Increasing intensity doesn’t work because you’ll need a) a Dyson sphere level of energy input. or b) a mirror big enough to occupy a significant fraction of our orbit.

This is just “data center in space” fiction

sparkyshocks@sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip

Replying to @⁨yesman@lemmy.world⁩

With mirrors, the maximum power is whatever sunlight hits the area of the mirror. Which for these satellites is 324 square meters. With solar irradiance at 1361 W/m^2 , that’s only 440 kW of energy, probably spread over a very large area, and not all of the spectrum useful for whatever you might want to use it for.

It’s an unbelievably stupid idea, but that also swings the other way in that it would be highly ineffective for any nefarious purpose, and will probably run out of money before it scales up to where each annoying satellite really does damage to visibility in the nigh sky or anything like that.

en