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by pidge 550 days ago
Soon available as a service https://www.reflectorbital.com/
6 comments

I refuse to believe this project isn't some sort of elaborate troll.
I'm sort of torn between that reaction and "hey, this seems similar logistics-wise to that space solar project I'm kicking off next week"...
Asimov described a similar thing in I Robot. I imagine it'd create very unpredictable climate issues.
Some people have convinced themselves they can disrupt anything.
Assuming this works (which might be a big if, even with recently greatly expanded launch capabilities), it raises the question of who gets to decide whether a given piece of land should be illuminated at night or not.

Hopefully not just the highest bidder, without any veto right of the (other) people that are there too?

Dave from the EEVBlog did a take on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkjyeI0ykGM
Scrolljacking makes it impossible to get info from a website at a glance.
That seems outrageous. Do they make any claims about how many watts or lumens they can deliver, and to what area?
"As many as VC money is prepared to pay for" is the answer here.
Astronomers: Starlink constellation solar panels are ruining the astro photography. Reflect Orbital: That sounds like a startup idea! /s

Russians also seemed to think that math could work out, but fumbled on funding and engineering - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite)

I’m pretty sure it is the eternal fate of Russian physicists to have worked out the math, but to not have the funding or engineering to implement a thing, right? So, I guess that fact, at least, doesn’t tell us much of anything.
Eternal fate of Russian physicist is to work it out on home soil, move to USA and help get it built there.