Scientists reveal controversial plan to launch 50,000 MIRRORS into space for 'sunlight on demand' –

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Scientists reveal controversial plan to launch 50,000 MIRRORS into space for 'sunlight on demand' – but sceptics warn it poses 'serious risks' to wildlife and humans

Daily Mail
By WILIAM HUNTER
10 March 2026



Scientists have revealed a controversial plan to launch 50,000 mirrors into space to offer 'sunlight on demand'.

California–based startup, Reflect Orbital, is poised to secure permission to launch a 60–foot (18.3–metre) prototype mirror into orbit to beam sunlight back to the Earth's surface.

Once it has reached an altitude of 400 miles (640 km), the mirror will unfurl and illuminate a patch of Earth about three miles (4.8 km) wide.

Someone looking up from the ground would see a small dot of light about as bright as the moon.

Reflect Orbital says its space mirrors could allow solar power plants to operate 24 hours a day, provide lighting for disaster–struck regions, and even replace street lights.

The company has already applied to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which issues licences for satellites, and the enormous mirror could launch as soon as this summer.

However, not everyone is on board with the plan.

Martha Hotz Vitaterna, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University and co–director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology, warned: 'The implications for wildlife, for all life, are enormous.'

(more)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15631695/Scientists-plan-launch-MIRRORS-space.html

[berdie]

What a horrible idea. I have never thought it wise to interfere with Mother Nature.

[The_Reader_David]

What a horrible idea. I have never thought it wise to interfere with Mother Nature.

This probably is a horrible idea, but "interferring with mother nature" includes a lot of things we do as a matter of course:  damming rivers to make lakes and dredging rivers to make them navigable being just two that sprang to mind. Arguably all of agriculture is "interferring with mother nature", as it building shelters of any sort to protect ourselves from the elements.

[Smokin Joe]

This probably is a horrible idea, but "interferring with mother nature" includes a lot of things we do as a matter of course:  damming rivers to make lakes and dredging rivers to make them navigable being just two that sprang to mind. Arguably all of agriculture is "interferring with mother nature", as it building shelters of any sort to protect ourselves from the elements.

Screwing around with circadian rhythm is a real foul-up, though. Everything from mating cycles to crop ripening can be disturbed. We already do this with electric lights and other stuff for humans, especially in urban environments, and look how nuts they've become in the cities. Swarms of sleep deprived wackos, with or without meth.

[berdie]

This probably is a horrible idea, but "interferring with mother nature" includes a lot of things we do as a matter of course:  damming rivers to make lakes and dredging rivers to make them navigable being just two that sprang to mind. Arguably all of agriculture is "interferring with mother nature", as it building shelters of any sort to protect ourselves from the elements.

I can't argue with the things mentioned...but they are controllable by man. And actually are, for the  most part, beneficial to man.

This trying to control the sun??? I'm not so sure.

[Cyber Liberty]

Scientists who got their kicks with ants and a magnifying glass when they were kids.

[Smokin Joe]

And thinking themselves Gods, they set out to remake creation...

"I AM the SCIENCE!"

Hubris knows no bounds.

(Icarus crashed, Daedalus did not. )

[The_Reader_David]

I can't argue with the things mentioned...but they are controllable by man. And actually are, for the  most part, beneficial to man.

This trying to control the sun??? I'm not so sure.

The space mirrors would be controllable by man, and at least the folks who are proposing them seem to fancy they will be beneficial,
though I here reiterate my view that berdie is probably correct in regarding it as a horrible idea.

[Smokin Joe]

The space mirrors would theoreticallybe controllable by man, and at least the folks who are proposing them seem to fancy they will be beneficial,
though I here reiterate my view that berdie is probably correct in regarding it as a horrible idea.

(addition mine).

Sorry to tamper with your statement, but let's get a few thousand of them and focus.
No, really focus--the mirrors.
Let's boil away your swimming pool, just for fun.
Or maybe boil away 250 meters of Everest and make it the second tallest mountain?
Or incinerate cities, melt missiles in their silos, have a Mediterranean fish boil? Harmless prank to a deadly weapon.

Not to mention the sheer amount of debris in orbit that could be enhanced with a few well focused beams of light, like cooking ants on a sidewalk with a magnifying glass.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. Genesis 1:4-5

Why not mess with that? After all, people are carving little girls out of little boys. What could possibly go wrong?