this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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A 60 foot square mirror, assuming it's 100 km above the surface, will have an angular diameter of like 0.01 degrees. It would be occluded by a housefly 35 meters away.
It's supposed to spread the sunlight across an area 3 miles across. 60x60 feet is like 334 square meters. Sunlight intensity in space peaks at like 1300 watts per square meter, so this is reflecting maximum of like 440,000 watts TOPS. Spread that across an area 3 miles by 3 miles, that's 23 million square meters. Assuming no loss of energy to the atmosphere, this would reflect 0.02 watts per square meter onto its target area
So just put a 23 million square meter lens near the ground to focus it onto a smaller solar panel. Do I have to do ALL the thinking around here?
(/s because that lens would be so big)
I mean they did experiment with solar panels that contain lenses to intensify sunlight and increase efficiency, but it's almost always cheaper to just buy more solar panels. Not even MPPT solar chargers are worth it vs buying one more panel.
This space mirror is really the perfect example of the pathological stupidity in our era. You just have to listen to the experts, but everyone just wants to push clickbait engagement, so they get funding by some equally moronic investors lol
I’ll file it up there with “Space data centers” as if any part of that idea even remotely obeys basic physics.
Yeah space compute centers are idiotic. Even if it could be made profitable it would be such a stupid idea.
The people pushing for privatization of space desperately are looking for profitable uses cases. There is a recent breakthrough with "hollow fiber optic cables" that makes the future promise of faster ping with Starlink mostly irrelevant too.
We should be building a moon base and explore mining and industry and something like a railgun to shoot back stuff back to earth. That would be the logical next step for humanity. But don't try to commercially exploit space, that is just stupid.
Uh, Mauritania and west Sahara are like... right here.
I like the cut of your jib.
The SI gang sends respect.