84
Booo..urns...Booo...urns
Oh well as long as the FCC are good with it. You know, that organisation that got Boeing to investigate themselves.
I'm not sure, but I think you might be confusing the FCC with the FAA.
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
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.
I was like "wait, weren't there people measuring the Earth-Moon distance with lasers?" so I had to check...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiments
At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers (4.0 mi) wide
Oh.
It's totally fucked up that one country can approve of a thing that is affecting all other countries. That is stupid and fuck the USA for polluting the sky for all of humanity.
The regime will 100% try to use it as a weapon
This totally is military tech. The states use case does not make any sense. But if you think about the military uses: You could light up the night in Gaza or Fallujah, making for easier observation of insurgents. Make the sky blink over russian refineries, confusing air defense. Spot sea drones in front of your ports. Eternal sunshine around US military bases and on the Ukrainian front.
I feel like at this point we need shade on demand more.
I can throw shade on demand. Who am I cussing out?
That many satellites with controlled directional reflection will get used as a weapon, either purposely or via hacking. You aim several of those at one spot you'll be scorching zones instantly
Botnet selling "burn down this guys house"
There's one in Florida that has irritated me for a while.
It "Real Genius" meets the real world, horrific.
Luckup Industries IRL...
On the bright side, our descendants will live on a planet banded by a glorious set of glimmering planetary rings. With all the crap they're planning on launching, Kessler syndrome seems inevitable at this point. But, if you're looking for a silver lining in this dark cloud, rings are it. A spherical shell of debris orbiting the planet does not stay a spherical shell. Interactions between the particles eventually coalesce the spherical shell into a flat disk, planetary rings.
They would be pretty, but yeah...the astronomers aren't going to be too happy about it...
our descendants
That's optimistic of you.
95% of human beings alive today could die tomorrow, and there would still be more of us around than when Julius Caesar walked the Earth.
I worry for the future. I see us on a path that will likely lead to a substantial decline in the total human population from the effects of climate change. It's not a future I want to see.
At the same time, extinction is not something has to remotely worry about.
While the Reflect Orbital approval is for one satellite, the company proposes launching a whopping 50,000 by 2035.
Well there's that at least.
SATCOM guy here, thats terrifying. Its the harshest environment and if 1/10th of 1% fail thats 50 out of control giant mirrors speeding around @ 17k mph.
They will be LEO so they can reenter and maybe hit the ground. Space Lab V2.0 all over again...
50k satellites? Who is going to pay for that much light? At least with Starlink/Satellite Internet there's wide spread demand from many different consumers, but for sunlight on demand? That just sounds like marketing to investors instead of a legitimate plan.
FCC can approve whatever they want, doesn't mean the rest of the world is going to let this happen...
Maybe I can use it for shift work. Have my own little bubble of daytime.
Every Bond villain worthy of the title should have a diabolical plot worthy of respect.
In Die Another Day, Gustav Graves ingratiates himself with the West, constructing a satellite named Icarus without the authorities realising that he is actually developing a space-based superweapon. Ostensibly, Graves has developed the satellite as a means of ensuring that crops can be grown year-round, bringing an end to starvation, but the truth is far more sinister: the purpose of the satellite is to provide North Korea with the clout to become a superpower, if not to actually dominate the world.
It has been done, with limited success:
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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