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The Russian Plan To Use Space Mirrors To Turn Night Into Day (vice.com)
merbs writes: Throughout the early 90s, a team of Russian astronomers and engineers were hellbent on literally turning night into day. By shining a giant mirror onto the earth from space, they figured they could bring sunlight to the depths of night, extending the workday, cutting back on lighting costs and allowing laborers to toil longer. If this sounds a bit like the plot of a Bond film, well, it's that too. The difference is that for a second there, the scientists, led by Vladimir Sergeevich Syromyatnikov, one of the most important astronautical engineers in history, actually pulled it off.
Has there been any thought given as to what this might do to the flora and fauna? Screwing up diurnal rhythms, mating seasons, migrations, etc. I mean seriously, this screams terrible idea.
That would add a lot more heat to the environment, just when there's already too much.
Does take a certain something to try and recast a 20 year old failure as a great success
In Soviet Russia, night lights you!
In the USA we have lamps.
"Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting"
[ http://www.urbanwildlands.org/... ]
...you are the one
Only you 'neath the moon or under the sun
Whether near to me or far
It's no matter, darling, where you are
I think of you day and night
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Since global warming is pretty slow. Gotta speed it up somehow.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
^^^^UP THERE^^^^
As every modern weapon of mass destruction (except perhaps drones, those are american) it had been originally thought of by the nazis and gets first built by either the americans or the russians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
i've been told we need to know.
Of course the weapon was attributed to the Nazi's and the depiction of the "laser like reflection of the sun" was hilarious, but I don't watch it expecting to see hard science. According to movies and tv shows, those crazy Nazi's abandoned bunkers all over the place with all sorts of crazy inventions in them. - HEX
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Would it have featured the ability to focus all the light onto a dissident-sized area?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
That RSC diagram, presumably from the early 90's, looks like something drawn in the US sometime in the 50's. It is amazing how badly communism retarded Russia.
Might I interest you in a quick lesson explaining the difference between the words "literally" and "figuratively"?
change a light bulb? 2.... 1 to call the electrician and 1 to mix the drinks. But really, just use a light bulb.
Please! Won't someone think of the fauna?
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They deserve one, too.
need a really really big mirror for this.. And this would screw up with nature, the wild life.. heck humans themselves.
It has already been done - sort of - by a town in Norway that uses mirrors to reflect sunlight down into the valley to extend the daylight hours. At a reasonably high latitude in the northern hemisphere there are not many flora or fauna to worry about in the middle of winter in an urban setting.
The only time you'd need to worry about it is if they focus the light a lot to create a heat based-death ray. That would also be far more like the plot of a bond film...
It doesn't matter where you park a giant shade mirror, the effects of solar rays hitting a large surface would eventually move it anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The thing about it is that it was built at a time of the Cold War SDI/Star Wars concepts. While as it might have had civilian uses, I suspect that it was a precursor to the equivalent of the American "Thousand Points of Light", a SDI concept that would use a ground based laser to fire into a orbiting mirror which would be redirected towards a target. However, if all you are doing is calibrating and orienting an orbiting mirror, you could sell it to the world as a purely scientific experiment.
The kicker in all of this is the protests mentioned which would disrupt the natural night environment. Now, we have been polluted with lots of light during the night time for the last hundred years, so I doubt that this is hardly a valid concern. I don't think that even the atomic bomb tests, which did irradiate a lot of people in the Pacific did not draw the same level of "concern".
A narrow-minded genius is actually a dangerous idiot, however the Russians are not alone in their ability to be smart enough to devise and execute such a plan but so lacking in general knowledge that they fail to see the harm it could do. Failing to realise the potential harm to ecosystems that are "clocked" by lunar cycles is about as myopic as any scientist can get.
Save this madness for your moon colonies..
Then again it may have really been a cover for "over the horizon" radar reflectors......
Couldn't one use mirrors on earth(or space) on mass to to reduce global warming(presuming it's needed).
1KW per meter squared hits the ground, that's a hell of a lot of power to send back out/up; clear sky permitting etc. On mass etc..
Hasn't this been done before?
Yes, of course it can. GoldenEye is soon to become reality (although it obviously wouldn't be as impressive as it was in the movie).
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Mirror peer into you and take selfie!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Because if there's is one thing that labourers are crying out for, it's more time to toil...
This is a project that can be undone in seconds but please spread fear and ignorance.
What damage exactly are you on about the fear of a dim light in a dark corner of the world oh the humanity.
For those who are not thinking... The purpose of this is to use as a weapon.
Actually, it would probably be a huge help to *reduce* global warming.
If I recall correctly burning enough fossil fuels to produce 1 watt-hour of thermal energy produces CO2 which, over the course of it's average lifetime in the atmosphere, will retain a million watt-hours of solar thermal energy. So, you could use reflected sunlight to light up cities a thousand times brighter than they are today, while still adding a thousand times less excess heat to the Earth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
We put giant mirror in space. Light up Frostbite Falls like daytime. Moose and squirrel can't sleep. When they go crazy, we steal secret rocket fuel formula.
Oh, Boris, you are a scheming nogoodnick!
Stop it, Natasha! You're turning my pretty head!
I live in Sweden. What is this 'sunlight' people speak of?
I certainly wouldn't mind extra sunlight hours, especially in the winter. It's very depressing to wake up in the dark and come home in the dark. That being said, I absolutely wouldn't want it if it meant having to work longer hours.
Oh dear. I can't imagine the laundry list of things that will go wrong with this idea. The world has evolved around having day and night. The things that happen at night need to happen, and at night. Take away the night, and the things that need to happen at night might not happen at night, if at all.
Light up:
- Area affected by natural disaster to help clean-up / rescue
- Open waters to aid search/rescue at night
- World events (Olympics for night time events)
- Northern mines/drilling operations doing winter installations (rental to re-coup costs)
Well, they do have places where the night last for months, literally. Something like this has the potential to make the artic and antartic areas livable and can be potentially sued to modulate the weather, so all in all not a terrible idea.
They also use the Space Mirrors to Space Floss.