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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.
From the article, they were planning on lighting up urban areas only. The mirrors wouldn't be large enough to light up more than a city, and the light would only have been the equivalent of a bright moonlight. And cities already have electric illumination at night. So this would only be substituting current electric night time lighting in city centers with the reflected light, which would have the advantage of cutting energy costs. The idea was being pitched as an energy saving measure for city centers. It's not so terrible if limited to urban centers.
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...
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MGB