EEVblog 1637- Solar Freakin Space Mirrors - Reflect Orbital DEBUNKED

[golden_labels]

Stupid ideas like going from Europe to India through the Western Ocean? What a fool would do that, if every educated person knows the distance is 12 thousand nautical miles and it’s a certainly suicidal mission? And that idiot denies basic geographical knowledge, making Earth four times smaller than it is known to be. That stupid queen, who has fallen for this and invested money in the voyage.

Oh, all the stupid ideas like designing a calculating machine! C’mon, even students can do back of the envelope calculations to see laws of mechanics would never let it work. Not to mention that crazy guy, who — oh my god — claimed Earth crosses celestial spheres and somehow nobody notices that. What an idiot, hahaha! Put him under home arrest.

/s

[Bud]

Directing sun light to areas at night may have unknown yet effects on wild life. Just throwing in another dimension here.

[Xena E]

It is odd that they find money for such crazy ideas, that are so far off from getting a benefit. I could imagine finding a few stupids, who don't belief in math, but these usually don't have big money.

All true but stupid people with other people's money exist, they are elected.

[.RC.]

Directing sun light to areas at night may have unknown yet effects on wild life. Just throwing in another dimension here.

The wildlife would already have been killed off by the solar farm construction.

[EEVblog]

FYI, the Reflect Orbital founder contacted me, he's a fan of the channel.
Basically used the excuse that viabiliy is based on thousands of them up to 100m in size and not the 10m ones proposed. And that street lighting is potential market big market.

And he urged me to re-run the numbers, I did, and it's still not viable. And I told him that even if they do get that prototype 10m array up, every potential customer is just going to laugh at the results.
And any potential street lighting marketing is doomed to failure if just a handful of residents complain.
I wished him the best though, and that I don't blame him for working on what I'm sure is a fun project using someone else's money.

[coppercone2]

the military applications however, it might be possible to use some much cheaper night vision if you have some illumination, on moonless nights. a grid square illuminator.

this could level the playing field if you rent out light to poorly equipped armies on primitive colonized planets

the sci-fi applications are endless! They might not be able to make 7th generation tubes on a deep space colony far beyond the local group, but they can string out some mirrors in space.

I wonder what it would look like. Having a spaced based backup light for the megopolis of the future might be a real feature.

[oPossum]

[thm_w]

FYI, the Reflect Orbital founder contacted me, he's a fan of the channel.
Basically used the excuse that viabiliy is based on thousands of them up to 100m in size and not the 10m ones proposed. And that street lighting is potential market big market.

And he urged me to re-run the numbers, I did, and it's still not viable. And I told him that even if they do get that prototype 10m array up, every potential customer is just going to laugh at the results.
And any potential street lighting marketing is doomed to failure if just a handful of residents complain.
I wished him the best though, and that I don't blame him for working on what I'm sure is a fun project using someone else's money.

Go to Alaska or northern Sweden/Norway and ask those people if they enjoy 24/7 light. Its straight up torture. If he had said lighting for farming, might have made a small amount of sense. and instead of saying "re-run the numbers" he could have provided the calculations he's done.

Oh well...

the military applications however, it might be possible to use some much cheaper night vision if you have some illumination, on moonless nights. a grid square illuminator.

this could level the playing field if you rent out light to poorly equipped armies on primitive colonized planets

Actually true but would never get off the ground if you mentioned something like that to investors.
Even as is I wonder if they'd run into military security issues. The light can be theoretically focused down to a spot and burn targets right?

[coppercone2]

you could build it so it has a limited range of motion with a scafolding of some sort so it can't focus to dangerous power levels unless you heavily modify it

The more you need to focus it, the more expenisve and precise the control system needs to be and the more energy it needs to spend adjusting it etc

if you don't need it super accurate you can make it kinda floppy so when adjustment thrusters fire its not really a solid plane and its OK if its a bit warped and stuff. If you are illuminating several km, it does not really matter, if you need to focus to a few meters it would probobly need to be a 100x over engineered design.

https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/Icarus

[EEVblog]

Even as is I wonder if they'd run into military security issues. The light can be theoretically focused down to a spot and burn targets right?

That would requrie an extreme level of collimation an focussing which is not possible with their mylar foil design. And is probably not possible at all from orbit?

[coppercone2]

it could also be a agricultural tool on other planets that are more distant from stars because theoretically its more reliable then reflectors that can be blown down by wind or something

does green house corn grow on mars?

Its kind of guaranteed your crop would not die because of a generator failure or fuel shortage...


It seems like something that can be relatively scrounged, without too much precise mechanics and advanced stuff lol, relatively speaking. and you can turn it off if your space peons stop paying taxes. It also makes farm land theft hard, because if someone takes your bread basket, if you control space you can turn off the growing capabilities, meaning the belligerents can't incrementally seize outlying territory, or at least if they do, they will not gain anything from it to bolster their earnings. This reduces the likely hood of small annexings, and it leaves diplomatic channels open because its non violent and non expensive and 100% possible to restore   

[quince]

I wished him the best though, and that I don't blame him for working on what I'm sure is a fun project using someone else's money.

It's a bit telling that he chose to reach out; a more experienced founder would have kept his mouth shut knowing he (a) can't win the argument on a technical basis & (b) doesn't have enough money to change your mind or get you to delete the video.

He's personally liable for lying to investors if he agrees with you that the business isn't viable. Not a good look for a young founder. Obviously any public opinion he shares requires he claim the company is viable, even if he personally knows it isn't.

Their seed round was last year and they're currently at 7. That means the seed funding round was probably about $1M for a valuation around $5 million. 1 year x 7x employees x $70k LA engineering salary x factor of 2 for overhead, materials, etc.

It's a relatively low risk bet, for the investors, that this team will figure out something unrelated that one of their other portfolio companies can use. What sucks is that nobody actually expects Reflect Orbital to succeed. Their work won't go to waste, but their equity is destined to be worthless.

If they fail to raise another funding round or get acquihired, their engineers will likely end up at Blue Origin or SpaceX working on adjacent topics: satellite power systems, communication links, you name it.

[EEVblog]

Thunderf00t!

[coppercone2]

by award winning crime reporter "Tony Pope"