oce comments on FCC approves giant space mirror as astronomers warn of risks to the night sky

[–] oce@jlai.lu 2 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

Do we need a paper to estimate that ecosystems that evolved with a night time with a moon (mostly partial, sometimes absent), are going to be disturbed by having 50k of them? Also it's the new product's responsibility to demonstrate its safety.

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io -2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] oce@jlai.lu 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

Earth's circumference is 40 000 km, if you align 50k patches of 5 km width, it covers more than 6 times this circumference. Current human's light pollution is already a biodiversity issue. This would be massively worsening the situation for just one system.

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 3 months ago

Only a single mirror has been approved.

Even if all 50,000 were up, where do you think they'll be aimed? Cities and other developed land, most likely. Last time something like this was proposed the plan was to replace streetlights with them, which would save electricity.

But people would rather get angry about "supervillains" I guess.

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