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From: Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: OT: Surely there's an SF story with this.....
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2024 13:49:53 -0500
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On 9/3/2024 1:13 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:
> On 9/2/2024 12:01 PM, Paul S Person wrote:
>> On Sun, 1 Sep 2024 14:16:07 -0400, Cryptoengineer
>> <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> <snip-a-bit>
>>> The Soviets did try a 20 meter mirror, which very
>>> briefly provided light on a rapidly moving 5km spot
>>> on the ground, equivalent to 'several full moons'.
>>>
>>> https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-turned-night-into-day/
>>>
>>> So, yes, maybe you could provide a light with some usefulness
>>> for a few minutes, if the mirror was steered to point to one
>>> spot. Reflect Orbitals claim is that they can provide
>>> light for 4 minutes at a time.
>>>
>>> The ISS can be in sight for as long as 6.5 minutes on a pass, so
>>> RO's mirrors must be lower. That's good for being bright, but also
>>> means they're subject to a lot of drag from remnant traces of
>>> atmosphere, and will need to either have propulsion to keep on
>>> station, or be replaced frequently.
>>
>> If they were far enough out, they would be over the same spot for a
>> lot longer than that. Have to be a /really/ big mirror, though.
>>
>>> The suggestion to use RO's mirrors to power solar plants is a
>>> total non-starter. The mirror can't deliver more light than
>>> falls on it, and if its spread over several kilometers on the
>>> ground, its just not bright enough to do anything useful, quite
>>> aside from the idea that powering one for less than 5 minutes
>>> has a use case.
>>>
>>> Finally, you'd piss off every astronomer and stargazer on Earth.
>>
>> IIRC, Musk's satellite clouds have already done that.
> 
> Yes, and Starlink has gone to considerable effort to
> mitigate the problem, with significant (but not total)
> success.
> 
> The constellation the Chinese are starting to put up
> looks like very bad news, though.
> 
> pt

Especially when the Chinese space ship broke apart in orbit into 300+ 
pieces at 800 km LEO.
    https://www.space.com/china-megaconstellation-launch-space-junk
and
  
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1eo0nbi/chinese_rocket_breaks_apart_after/

People are very unhappy as this is not the first time the Chinese have 
done this.

Lynn