the HUSTLE BY Ben Berkley 8/7/2023
Cooling the planet is as easy as putting an umbrella on an asteroid and blocking out the sun
The sun is gonna keep boring a hole through our souls, but an ambitious idea to soften the blow is progressing.
For real?Szapudi published a paper on the idea last week. It proposes:
• Parking a solar shield between Earth and the sun — in a fixed spot ~1m miles from our planet — to reduce direct exposure to sunlight.
• The idea has come up before, but ran into a feasibility wall: the need for a shield light enough to be launchable, but heavy enough that gravity and solar radiation wouldn’t knock it out of position.
• Szapudi beats that with his proposal: capturing an asteroid (something that’s apparently possible) and using it as a counterweight for a screen.
The concept now theoretically works, and would offer quite a lifeline: It’d block ~1.7% of solar radiation, offering a small but meaningful global temperature drop.
Here’s the reality check
This solar shield idea entering the realm of possibility is the headline here. In practice, there’s still a long way to go.
• Today’s materials for a shield and asteroid tether are still too heavy for today’s rockets — though Szapudi suggests that may change in the next few decades.
More:
https://thehustle.co/cooling-the-planet-is-as-easy-as-putting-an-umbrella-on-an-asteroid-and-blocking-out-the-sun/