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EEVblog 1637: Solar Freakin' Space Mirrors! - Reflect Orbital DEBUNKED

EEVblog 1637: Solar Freakin' Space Mirrors! - Reflect Orbital DEBUNKED

EEVblog
0 HN recommenders · discussed 2024–2026
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About this video

EEVblog's Dave Jones critiques Reflect Orbital's plan to sell sunlight to solar farms after dark using orbital mirrors. He walks through the numbers to show the idea does not work out.

Why it appears in the archive

HN cites it as a debunking whenever the space mirror startup comes up, as a TL;DW that the design is impractical.

AI-generated summary and labels from the source dataset; verify important details against the video. Source & credits.

From the Hacker News discussion

DemocracyFTW2 · 2024-10 · critical

This has long been debunked e.g. by Thunderf00t ( [LINK] ) and EEVblog ( [VIDEO] ) It comes as no surprise this won't work when you imagine 1) where you have to put the mirrors: either in low orbit so as to keep light dispersion low and the apparent mirror size from the ground big—but now you have the problem that the mirrors move with high speed relative to the ground, and the time frame where you can still reflect light before entering into Earth's shadow is very short. Or you put them into a higher orbit so they can reflect light for a longer time, but now the light spot that arrives on the ground is even more dispersed 2) how big these mirrors can practically become, and how little light there will be when you have a, say, 100m² mirror hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away.

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kspacewalk2 · 2024-10 · critical

Found a rather... skeptical take (I'd argue it's more of a takedown)[0]. A bit crazy how far off the math is from viability, for a company that someone actually invested money in. Impressive salesmanship though. [0] [VIDEO]

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sxp · 2025-02 · critical

YT video going into the math and physics involved: [VIDEO] TL;DW: not practical in it's current design.

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reader9274 · 2026-07 · critical

First, they don't exist and 10k of them will never exist. Second, nothing would happen, the power will be minuscule and last for a very short time focused on such a small patch. see: [VIDEO]

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