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Startup Says It'll Use Huge Space Mirror to Sell Sunlight During Nighttime (futurism.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It's so dumb uggh. Getting the same power output as the sun would need a MINIMUM surface area of the size of the area on earth it would illuminate.

So say the use case is extending daylight time in Anchorage, Alaska during winter. You would need a mirror that has MINIMUM surface area that of Anchorage. Somehow, it would need to be in an orbit that can reliably reflect light to Anchorage at all points.

Then, it would most likely be in low Earth orbit as putting it higher would require bigger mirrors. However, if u are in LEO, u are also moving incredibly fast. You would thus need an array of these super large mirrors.

All of this for what? Something that an led can do incredibly easily?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Would it not be possible to deflect it through a lens? Couldn't that increase the spread area significantly and because of the contrast at night you would only need a fraction of the light intensity to make an area feel well lit?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

You don’t need a lens, just a differently shaped mirror. Their point is just that the light you capture is based on the mirror’s surface area, so if you are selling sunlight-equivalent amounts of light you would need a mirror of equal area to that you are selling. You would not need such a large mirror to sell an area of dimmer light, and you would not need a lens.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

A convex mirror could work, sure. A lens would be impossible to construct for the size necessary.
I don't get what u mean by "contrast at night", but sure - let's assume that you would need 5% of the power at noon. You would still need a mirror with a surface area of 5% of the area you are illuminating.