There are no "supervillains" and Morgoth is a fictional character, so yes, one of us is misunderstanding.

Quite the opposite. The Star of Eärendil was a guardian of the Doors of Night, through which Morgoth was banished.

It was light from Eärendil, stored in the Phial of Galadirel, that was instrumental in defeating Shelob in Lord of the Rings.

I think you're drastically misunderstanding how this proposed constellation would work. It's not putting 50,000 "moons" in the sky. You can only see the light from the mirror in that one specific 5km patch of land that it's being aimed at. The vast majority of the world - including all the "wilderness", because who would pay to point these things at random patches of undeveloped wilderness - will not receive extra light from these things.

It's more like setting up floodlights at a construction site, or street lights in a city.

I'm not seeing why. Do you have any links to sources about that? If they were to focus all 50,000 mirrors on one 5km patch of land simultaneously that'd be 5000 lux, which is less than 5% of the intensity of full sunlight at noon. It would be impossible to do this since the 50,000 mirrors would be spread around the Earth, and if you brought them all together into some kind of grand conjunction they'd only remain in position to do so for a few minutes.

Why would they spread the light evenly? They're planning on selling it. Someone would need to pay them to have a place illuminated, it's not going to be randomly beamed all over.

That's part of why experiments like this are done. Reflect Orbital would prefer that the spot be kept as tight as possible, they ultimately need to test out the technology to refine it.

Almost everyone in this thread seems to be jumping straight from "their first prototype was approved for testing" to "therefore every plan of theirs is about to be immediately implemented." And the dopamine that comes from the ensuing rage and fear is making it hard to accept otherwise, it'd kill the buzz.

Also it’s who gets to approve such a monstrous plan?

The FCC. It's in the title. There's more detail in the article if you want.

Surely not a national government as it is an international issue.

Satellites have always been regulated by the nation they're launched from or owned by. There are international treaties regulating some aspects of that, but treaties are implemented by their signatories - the national governments.

But they only have approval for one.

Ah, that's why pear-based weaponry played such a small role in World War II?

Have to admit, I've completely forgotten about Pear Harbor.

"Sunlight on demand" is an exaggeration. The plan is to create a 5km spot of 0.1 lux, which is a bit brighter than a full moon.

Every time I've seen this news posted (and I've seen it a lot over the past few days) everyone has leapt to some very extreme conclusions.

Should have just played along. Free wife.