This is when difference science fields should have worked together. Psychology and biology would have shown a large amount of such reflectors would be a very bad idea as it would negatively influence the human circadian rhythm and cause severe psychological distress in the long run.
Why don't we use this technique to terraform Mars by aiming such of a solar mirror at a ice cap of Mars. this could be quite a intresting idea to start a greenhouse effect and warm up the planet.
It's doable, but needs a whole fleet of these suckers. Warming up an entire planet is really no small task, especially not on Mars where you get about 1/3 the sunlight we get on Earth.
Interestingly NASA and others already have some plans on how to provide a protective magnetic field for Mars that is definitely within the realm of possibility with close to today's technology. One idea is to put a very strong magnet at a lagrange point between Mars and the Sun such that the magnet is in a stable position between the two all the time. That would create an artificial magnetic buffer that would protect Mars from losing its atmosphere to the solar wind. And at that distance from Mars it would only need to create a field with a strength of a few Tesla (about the strength of an MRI) to provide enough deflection to nudge solar wind particles away from the planet. The tech isn't all here yet but it's definitely feasible.
The same technology could be used to reflect light away from earth. The area needed, even if multiple mirrors were used, would be massive unless positioned far enough out. In theory though we could control the sunlight reaching earth, making it cooler or warmer depending on our needs.
It's likely not that directly an impact on any one species if the daylight was extended an hour since many species survive with the light conditions at the North Pole (I mean their ranges include the north pole, but flourish there and at other conditions). If any danger I think it would be more of a cascade effect, like night hunters lacking time to hunt, which makes species that prey on them lack food if they can't flourish. However, large scale climate change is even more dangerous for most species so controlling Earth's temperature would save countless species from extinction level environmental changes. tl;dr Using it to prevent mass extinctions from climate change would be cool, using it for a bit more light to grow a bit more food or play baseball doesn't seem quite reasonable.
My WAG: nobody maintained its orbit, and it gradually fell into Earth's atmosphere. IIRC, ISS would burn up after ten years if they stopped reboosting its orbit now.
Why did I not know about this? This is such a cool story from space history! I know about solar sails and the concept of reflecting sunlight back to Earth, but I had thought it was still just a concept!
another fun thing about metallized mylar is that its used in everything from medical packaging for instruments and prescription drug bags to those bags behind the counter at Starbucks that hold all the different flavors of coffee. Those Starbucks bags are printed on metallized mylar and molten plastic laminates the metallized side to a sealant film with a plastic resin to keep a water barrier in the bag.
Such a mirror that would turn night into day firstly sounds like an ecological disaster directly harming all nocturnal spieces and processes and secondly I'm glad they didn't do it because i don't know how i'd ever get to sleep at night with than annoying light on all the time.
Firstly it's not a stupid question. Secondly just because photons don't have mass; doesn't mean they can't push an object. With regards to light it doesn't need mass in order to apply a force. In my case since I don't know that much about solar sails I figured I'd find an answer online that might help you get a better understanding. I hope it helps. This is it:" Indeed, photons have no mass. However, they DO have energy and momentum. It turns out that energy and momentum are the requirements that make a solar sail work, not mass. If we think about a slow massive particle, like a bowling ball, we can help to make sense of this. If the bowling ball is not moving, then it can't make anything move. And a heavy bowling ball can make something move more than a light bowling ball (if we assume both bowling balls are moving with the same speed). To summarize, how much something moves (how much momentum is transferred) depends linearly on both the bowling balls' mass and speed. Momentum (for slow moving massive objects) is defined as p = m*v (p is the momentum, m is the mass, and v is the velocity). This momentum is what gets transferred when wind hits a normal sail. But photons have momentum without having mass! This is how they can push things around, they transfer momentum. For a photon, E = h*f = mc2 so, p = hf/c. In this case, p is once again momentum, h is Planck's constant (6.62 x 10-34 Joule*seconds), and f is the frequency of the photon. This is how a solar sail works. Photons transfer some of their momentum to the sail, thereby propelling it along very much like a sailboat in the ocean." Source: www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae270.cfm
Which is why the tropics with their year round growing season are such a dead and barren wasteland... Wait... (Most species don't actually do that poorly when introduced to extended growing seasons, but some don't trigger their reproductive cycles as easily. However 'extending a growing season' is not the same as turning it into a continuous growing season without seasonal breaks.) And if we're getting to the point where we can improve solar gain in a region by way of orbital equipment, then we could also BLOCK solar gain in other areas, and as a species take better control over the thermal conditions of our entire planet. Not a project you want to go into lightly, but it is still a very valid line of research and development that should be considered.
Increasing the average temperature in the tundra is not really something we want to do. If the permafrost were to melt, it would have catastrophic consequences for the northern ecosystem, plus it would release trapped methane into the atmosphere, which, you know, would be bad... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions
don't worry, just block or reflect some infrared light with an infrared mirror and then you've added to the total energy available for plants and vision. The only issue should be nocturnal animals
True... but the video makes it sound as if there haven't been any solar sail implementation since the Russian attempts... then they should at least have mentioned the IKAROS from 2010, if they only want to mention satellites that have been launched in the past (200 m2 sail).
[01:04] if you were to bounce photons between matching aligned solar sails, both would accelerate rapidly-in opposite directions-and that'd be a really fast way to get moving...
One of the ideas on how to use this solar sail technology was to use it to terraform Mars. You could theoretically build giant solar mirrors around the orbit of Mars, aiming them at the polar caps to melt the frozen gas to start up a greenhouse effect, warming the planet by creating an atmosphere.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't scale up, does it? Unless you have square miles of space mirror, you could only provide a small ground area with a perceivable amount of light. So, agricultural or large scale industrial applications seem out of the question. Also, no worries about overheating anything.
i remember a movie based on this idea. in the movie, the satellite (ICARUS?) used mirrors to reflect sunlight towards a desired target location on Earth. enough energy was concentrated into a giant death beam that incinerated everything in its path. i think the beam looked like it had a 1 mile radius
İ wathed the movie 'Alien Covenant' a couple days ago and the spaceship in the movie had big foldsblr sails just like described in the video but they were not used to reflect light nor for momentum but just as huge solar panels
2:28 : "... the mirrors would unfold themselves in space, and would reflect light back to earth. If it worked, everbody would be happy" Not the astronomers who need dark skies for observing with their telescopes - and not amateurs like me who do the same just out of interest and fun.
The Planetary Society, a group of space enthusiasts and boosters, have successfully launched Lightsail 1 in 2015, and is set to launch Lightsail 2 in 2019.
Could we focus solar light on a specific area of the world then put some gigantic solar farm onto the ground at the exact same area to harvest solar power 24/7 ? Could be really interesting especially if we can select the location to maximize the output power (no cloud area, less atmosphere to cross etc.)
this would be a great way to light towns near observatories, you could schedule a turn-off and there would be no problem. very little cost too, and could be deployed in emergency areas where like a disaster knocked out power to a whole city, suddenly a light in the sky lets people get to safety. not really practical, but something humanity should have i think lol
well they wouldn't be that expensive to launch because they are light and if you could instead ship the mirror factory into space they would be cheaper than dirt
Ender Bob, a mirror factory in space? 😂 They would have to ship up materials to feed into it, and they would have to fix it. Not to mention such a thing has never been done before in 0G. It would be much easier and cheaper to simply build a mirror factory on Earth and launch a bunch into space at a time.
I was suggesting mining and refining the resources in space as well bringing the cost of an individual mirror down to price of cost of system divided by the number of panels produced.
Ender Bob We should absolutly start looking into space mining operations. There are only so many resources on this planet, and the processes to access them are a detrament to enviromental health, and thus, humantities health. I think space mining is not only a logical next step in humanities quest for resources, but one that is attainable with todays technologies with proper funding and attention. The only reason I see for us not having some type of operational moon base already is lack of funding only and national or global will.
I'm not quite getting how light particles bouncing off a mirror impart kinetic energy. I thought they had no mass? Would be interesting to see a follow-up about that.
Wouldn't it be good to use a space mirror or dish to propel solar sails? Wouldn't that really extend the range & speed? Especially if we put 1 at every star we go to.
I've always Kind of wondered if the same sailing techniques we use on earth on sail driven ships would work for space ships. I've had this in my head since I saw Treasure Planet.
My understanding of sails on boats is not that wind pushes them. Rather, they create low pressure on the leeward side, thereby pulling the boat through the water. Doesn't seem the same as these light 'sails'.
3:42 Wrong. I calculated that at 300 km distance to earth (MIR had a distance between 296 km and 421 km to Earth) and given the diameter, albedo, and distance to earth of the moon, you'd need a mirror (assumed albedo to be 1) with a diameter of 469.6 m to reflect as much light as the moon. I then looked what you claimed up on Wikipedia. Wikipedia says that only the bright spot was as bright as the full moon which is very different from what people typically understand from the ambiguous description you gave which explains why I calculated a radius which is very different from the actual radius.
I like that sciShow space presents things in a non-"na na na na goo-goo, stick your head in doo-doo" anti-Russian undertone, instead expressing genuine regret that an interesting scientific experiment failed, regardless of borders or politics.
At 2:20 you state that mylar is a thin reflective material. But mylar is not reflective on its own, it's just a transparent polymer. Mylar is made reflective by depositing a thin layer of aluminium onto it.
If you put permanent installation mirrors in orbit around the sun. Could you not use the to launch ships to near light speed then build another at the next star & the next star & the next star. have 2 lane byways for slowing & accelerating the ships. ?
Yes those are some of the proposed solar highways people have been coming up with over the years, of course we are talking about projects on a far bigger scale then anything we have attempted sofar. Although it should be understood the acceleration on even something so elaborate would be incredibly slow, it would still take decades to get anywhere.
They should use these to create a highly focused beam on a solar panel power plant, so that it can work at night. The results could be interesting at least.
I could have been useful for lighting up metropolitan areas when conserving nature's rhythms is moot at this point or for keeping solar power plants running 24/7.
Would need to be a highly coordinated effort but obviously if someone funds it then this is doable, although we need to consider what effects this will have on our atmosphere long term.
I have a small pedantic request. I really like how SciShow has adopted SI units, but could the spelling of the SI units be non-americanised as well? "meter" is not a unit of distance, "metre" is. A "meter" is a device used for measuring something.
Do you imagine the cost to send to space a 20m wide mirror ? In which reality could they have sent an army of them that could've been of any use at all ?
I believe the fine folks at the Plantary Society would agree, Solar Sailing is the way to go when taking about moving things through space when your not crunched for time.
When we send satellites into space, do we leave them behind considering that the earth spins away from it, or does it stay in earths orbit around the sun?
Earths gravity keeps them spinning around itself, most fall back down to Earth eventually and some mishaps have had stuff shoot out into the solar system.
Gotta respect some things about the Soviet Union. "Want to extend daylight hours by making a giant mirror?" "Will it mean we have to stop seeing how far down we can dig?" "Nope." "Then eff yeah!"
Indeed, and they are being used to propel CubeSats. The NEA Scout (Near-Earth Asteroid Scout) spacecraft that will fly aboard the first Space Launch System--SLS--rocket to fly is a CubeSat, and it has a square solar sail (which will be boom-supported, rather than spin-deployed-and-rigidized [both types work well]). Its solar sail will propel it--without using any "fuel," besides the recoil of the solar photons that reflect off its shiny surface--to fly by and examine multiple NEAs. Also: To clean up near-Earth space (which is a junkyard, whose refuse is hurtling in orbit at velocities up to 5 miles per second [8 km/s]), deorbit sails are increasingly being installed on satellites. (Some are spin-deployed, while others use inflatable support booms [whose inflation gas comes from subliming, solid benzoic acid, which was used in the Echo and Pageos balloon satellites], depending on the manufacturer, and on the type of spacecraft the deorbit sail is designed to bring down from orbit.) Plus: When deployed at the end of the satellites' useful service lives, the deorbit sails (which always face in one direction, toward the Sun) produce a slight but constant photonic retro-thrust, on that side of the orbit; this lowers that side of the orbit, so that the satellite, with its attached and deployed deorbit sail, grazes the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. The open sail increases this aerodynamic drag, and it--along with the deorbit sail's photonic retro-thrust--ultimately slows the satellite enough so that it re-enters the atmosphere and burns up like a meteor.
Turn the mirrors around and solve global warming? How big of an array (in terms of % of sky covered) would it take to change temperature by a few degrees?
The concept you're looking for is called a "solar shade". As with all geoengineering there are problems and risks, but it's possible it may be worth it to try if we don't drastically change course soon.
Global warming is natural, we are only speeding the process up. Volcanoes spew out a lot of CO2 and not to mention wild fires, both of which are not man made.
Would a astronaught near Pluto who looks at his hand in space see it aswell as one in earth orbit? Or would it be darker the further from the sun you are
This couldn't be good for global warming. Maybe the opposite could be done to reflect some sun light back to space instead of reaching earth. Imagine a dyson swarm of these things in orbit between earth and the sun to combat global warming.
Think about this: If the sun was out 24/7 around the world, the world could function on a 24/7 shift. It would mean relying less on first shift workers, and hire more people for production with less time worked.
I just imagine on the first test. The sun setting, then the satellites activate, daylight begins to illuminate the sky as scientists cheer in success, only for a world destroying heat ray to form, and sweep the Earth's surface. It sounds like some Rick and Morty stuff.
Because we haven't sufficiently messed with the climate or with wildlife or with our own circadian rhythms... this should really go in the category of "We can, but that doesn't mean we should." As for "everyone being happy," I rather doubt the average agricultural worker was thrilled about having their working day extended. I grew up on farms. It's hard enough work without some bureaucrat deciding that the workday should be longer.
It's such a cool idea though. But we have a lot of other things to consider about if we are to use that technology. If we work longer, factories open for longer, it can contributes to global warming, also having the sun for longer than usual can also rise the temperature of earth. And human could exploit thus technology and can cause even worse global warming and other problems. I'm glad it contributed to other researches though. This is a great example of great innovations coming from the craziest ideas 😊😊💖💖🌌🌌
Plants absorb CO2 in the day. Aside from that, global warming could be helped by reflecting light over the deserts, cooling them by causing a large shadow, while also lighting up solar powerplants even more.
"Everybody would be happy" except for the overworked farmers stumbling around like sleep-deprived zombies, you mean. The serfs can work 24/7, comrade -- if they die of it, that's what serfs are here for. No thanks.
Its funny how often people talking about solar sails, a far more advanced tech then regular sails, get the facts about even the regular sails wrong... its been decades - hundred years, since sails worked like this. Now its primarily the principle of an airfoil - aerodynamic profile... utilizing mostly the pull from low pressure on one side of the "wing" sail, rather than the PUSH into the sail... Just kinda funny to get the easy thing wrong while talking correctly (hopefully) about space tech :D
I wonder if that type of technology would be useful for planets that are tidal locked to their parent star in order to expand the habitable strip into the dark side of a planet... Provided we have the tech to even make it there in the first place...
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This is when difference science fields should have worked together. Psychology and biology would have shown a large amount of such reflectors would be a very bad idea as it would negatively influence the human circadian rhythm and cause severe psychological distress in the long run.
Why don't we use this technique to terraform Mars by aiming such of a solar mirror at a ice cap of Mars. this could be quite a intresting idea to start a greenhouse effect and warm up the planet.
Also you have weak gravity, even if you gave Mars a magnetic field using satellites you'd have a hard time keeping the gas.
Joost Nusselder the icecaps are... toxic
It's doable, but needs a whole fleet of these suckers. Warming up an entire planet is really no small task, especially not on Mars where you get about 1/3 the sunlight we get on Earth.
MsSomeonenew The next challenge is keeping the atmosphere when the sun can scatter it into space with its unfiltered light.
Interestingly NASA and others already have some plans on how to provide a protective magnetic field for Mars that is definitely within the realm of possibility with close to today's technology. One idea is to put a very strong magnet at a lagrange point between Mars and the Sun such that the magnet is in a stable position between the two all the time. That would create an artificial magnetic buffer that would protect Mars from losing its atmosphere to the solar wind. And at that distance from Mars it would only need to create a field with a strength of a few Tesla (about the strength of an MRI) to provide enough deflection to nudge solar wind particles away from the planet. The tech isn't all here yet but it's definitely feasible.
Pretty fascinating, though I think it was for the best that it didn't work out. If anything the Earth needs to be more shaded.
The same technology could be used to reflect light away from earth. The area needed, even if multiple mirrors were used, would be massive unless positioned far enough out. In theory though we could control the sunlight reaching earth, making it cooler or warmer depending on our needs.
also reflective technology could be used to melt an asteroid enough to miss earth (given time)
Imagine what this would do for all the plant and animal life that evolved to live with a day/night cycle (Including us humans).
It's likely not that directly an impact on any one species if the daylight was extended an hour since many species survive with the light conditions at the North Pole (I mean their ranges include the north pole, but flourish there and at other conditions).
If any danger I think it would be more of a cascade effect, like night hunters lacking time to hunt, which makes species that prey on them lack food if they can't flourish.
However, large scale climate change is even more dangerous for most species so controlling Earth's temperature would save countless species from extinction level environmental changes.
tl;dr Using it to prevent mass extinctions from climate change would be cool, using it for a bit more light to grow a bit more food or play baseball doesn't seem quite reasonable.
Considering most plants only can grow at night, they'd be really disappointed.
Sounds like step one in a fiery beam of death.
I wish
The Hammer of Dawn.
New Message "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a really big gun."
maybe that's why USSR found that interesting
nice profile picture
What happend to Znamya 2?
The mirror was de-orbited after several hours and burned up in atmospheric reentry over Canada.
My WAG: nobody maintained its orbit, and it gradually fell into Earth's atmosphere. IIRC, ISS would burn up after ten years if they stopped reboosting its orbit now.
SummitSummit So our second moon didn't shine for a long time.
Nope, from what I recall it was only up and open for a few short hours.
It was eaten by a bear.
I love these space history video's! Thank you!
Imagine if Russia and the USA collaborated instead of this mindless politics, we truly could be living the early era of the space colonisation.
We are collaborating, or at least colluding.
Yeah we are collaborating
steve gutin not arguing the fact, but in the scale of time to get the stone rolling we could have accomplished much more.
WonderzStevey That's fair.
WonderzStevey, we do live in the (very) early era of the space colonisation
Why did I not know about this? This is such a cool story from space history! I know about solar sails and the concept of reflecting sunlight back to Earth, but I had thought it was still just a concept!
another fun thing about metallized mylar is that its used in everything from medical packaging for instruments and prescription drug bags to those bags behind the counter at Starbucks that hold all the different flavors of coffee. Those Starbucks bags are printed on metallized mylar and molten plastic laminates the metallized side to a sealant film with a plastic resin to keep a water barrier in the bag.
Such a mirror that would turn night into day firstly sounds like an ecological disaster directly harming all nocturnal spieces and processes and secondly I'm glad they didn't do it because i don't know how i'd ever get to sleep at night with than annoying light on all the time.
Sorry if this is a stupid question: I thought that photons don't have mass. So how can they propel a solar sail by bouncing off?
If I remember rightly, the photon's frequency decreases so it loses energy even though the speed remains the same.
Abaris84 Newtonian mechanics don't work at quantum level
Never heard of radiation pressure before. Guess I'll read up on that. Thank you for your thorough reply! :)
Firstly it's not a stupid question. Secondly just because photons don't have mass; doesn't mean they can't push an object. With regards to light it doesn't need mass in order to apply a force. In my case since I don't know that much about solar sails I figured I'd find an answer online that might help you get a better understanding. I hope it helps.
This is it:" Indeed, photons have no mass. However, they DO have energy and momentum. It turns out that energy and momentum are the requirements that make a solar sail work, not mass.
If we think about a slow massive particle, like a bowling ball, we can help to make sense of this. If the bowling ball is not moving, then it can't make anything move. And a heavy bowling ball can make something move more than a light bowling ball (if we assume both bowling balls are moving with the same speed). To summarize, how much something moves (how much momentum is transferred) depends linearly on both the bowling balls' mass and speed. Momentum (for slow moving massive objects) is defined as p = m*v (p is the momentum, m is the mass, and v is the velocity).
This momentum is what gets transferred when wind hits a normal sail. But photons have momentum without having mass! This is how they can push things around, they transfer momentum. For a photon, E = h*f = mc2 so, p = hf/c. In this case, p is once again momentum, h is Planck's constant (6.62 x 10-34 Joule*seconds), and f is the frequency of the photon. This is how a solar sail works. Photons transfer some of their momentum to the sail, thereby propelling it along very much like a sailboat in the ocean."
Source: www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae270.cfm
Additionally, solar wind is not made of photons.
Gotta love dreamers that comes up with ideas like that. Solar sails pretty cool idea, perhaps one day...
Point it at the ice caps. Sound idea.
How many times did it take to say "Syromyatnikov" correctly?
C2Lception he didn't say it correctly actually
Он всё равно произнёс не правильно)
That could be a super way to increase agriculture in the northern hemisphere. Plants could grow year around, would be awesome I think :D
Which is why the tropics with their year round growing season are such a dead and barren wasteland... Wait... (Most species don't actually do that poorly when introduced to extended growing seasons, but some don't trigger their reproductive cycles as easily. However 'extending a growing season' is not the same as turning it into a continuous growing season without seasonal breaks.)
And if we're getting to the point where we can improve solar gain in a region by way of orbital equipment, then we could also BLOCK solar gain in other areas, and as a species take better control over the thermal conditions of our entire planet. Not a project you want to go into lightly, but it is still a very valid line of research and development that should be considered.
Increasing the average temperature in the tundra is not really something we want to do. If the permafrost were to melt, it would have catastrophic consequences for the northern ecosystem, plus it would release trapped methane into the atmosphere, which, you know, would be bad... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions
It's already happening and there are no mirrors in space... if there are no mirrors in space and we're all dying what could be causing it? Greed.
don't worry, just block or reflect some infrared light with an infrared mirror and then you've added to the total energy available for plants and vision. The only issue should be nocturnal animals
& kill agriculture in the southern hemisphere by increasing overall global temperatures.
No mention of the LightSail 2 project by The Planetary Society, which is scheduled to be launched on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy?... :(
Well it is an incredibly tiny satellite (10 x 30cm), it's something but far from even the oldest attempts.
True... but the video makes it sound as if there haven't been any solar sail implementation since the Russian attempts... then they should at least have mentioned the IKAROS from 2010, if they only want to mention satellites that have been launched in the past (200 m2 sail).
That's an amazing feat of science & engineering, even if the 2nd one failed. I can't believe I've never heard of this!
[01:04] if you were to bounce photons between matching aligned solar sails, both would accelerate rapidly-in opposite directions-and that'd be a really fast way to get moving...
They would get absorbed pretty quickly though
Docking was his specialty
Informative and interesting, thanks
This sounds like a pretty cool idea. Might be a good idea for future space colonization to increase sunlight, thus raising temperatures.
One of the ideas on how to use this solar sail technology was to use it to terraform Mars. You could theoretically build giant solar mirrors around the orbit of Mars, aiming them at the polar caps to melt the frozen gas to start up a greenhouse effect, warming the planet by creating an atmosphere.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't scale up, does it? Unless you have square miles of space mirror, you could only provide a small ground area with a perceivable amount of light. So, agricultural or large scale industrial applications seem out of the question. Also, no worries about overheating anything.
i remember a movie based on this idea. in the movie, the satellite (ICARUS?) used mirrors to reflect sunlight towards a desired target location on Earth. enough energy was concentrated into a giant death beam that incinerated everything in its path. i think the beam looked like it had a 1 mile radius
İ wathed the movie 'Alien Covenant' a couple days ago and the spaceship in the movie had big foldsblr sails just like described in the video but they were not used to reflect light nor for momentum but just as huge solar panels
2:28 : "... the mirrors would unfold themselves in space, and would reflect light back to earth. If it worked, everbody would be happy"
Not the astronomers who need dark skies for observing with their telescopes - and not amateurs like me who do the same just out of interest and fun.
The Planetary Society, a group of space enthusiasts and boosters, have successfully launched Lightsail 1 in 2015, and is set to launch Lightsail 2 in 2019.
Could we focus solar light on a specific area of the world then put some gigantic solar farm onto the ground at the exact same area to harvest solar power 24/7 ? Could be really interesting especially if we can select the location to maximize the output power (no cloud area, less atmosphere to cross etc.)
this would be a great way to light towns near observatories, you could schedule a turn-off and there would be no problem. very little cost too, and could be deployed in emergency areas where like a disaster knocked out power to a whole city, suddenly a light in the sky lets people get to safety. not really practical, but something humanity should have i think lol
well they wouldn't be that expensive to launch because they are light and if you could instead ship the mirror factory into space they would be cheaper than dirt
Ender Bob, a mirror factory in space? 😂
They would have to ship up materials to feed into it, and they would have to fix it. Not to mention such a thing has never been done before in 0G.
It would be much easier and cheaper to simply build a mirror factory on Earth and launch a bunch into space at a time.
This would only be effective if the mirrors were in geosynchronous orbit, with one orbiting above each town/city.
I was suggesting mining and refining the resources in space as well bringing the cost of an individual mirror down to price of cost of system divided by the number of panels produced.
Ender Bob We should absolutly start looking into space mining operations. There are only so many resources on this planet, and the processes to access them are a detrament to enviromental health, and thus, humantities health. I think space mining is not only a logical next step in humanities quest for resources, but one that is attainable with todays technologies with proper funding and attention. The only reason I see for us not having some type of operational moon base already is lack of funding only and national or global will.
I'm not quite getting how light particles bouncing off a mirror impart kinetic energy. I thought they had no mass? Would be interesting to see a follow-up about that.
Wouldn't it be good to use a space mirror or dish to propel solar sails? Wouldn't that really extend the range & speed? Especially if we put 1 at every star we go to.
I've always Kind of wondered if the same sailing techniques we use on earth on sail driven ships would work for space ships. I've had this in my head since I saw Treasure Planet.
I love simple yet ingenious solution like what this soviet scientist propose.. as a fellow science researcher i tips my hat of to him
My understanding of sails on boats is not that wind pushes them. Rather, they create low pressure on the leeward side, thereby pulling the boat through the water. Doesn't seem the same as these light 'sails'.
This would be a great use for solar panels on the ground, which you can light up even in the night.
3:42 Wrong. I calculated that at 300 km distance to earth (MIR had a distance between 296 km and 421 km to Earth) and given the diameter, albedo, and distance to earth of the moon, you'd need a mirror (assumed albedo to be 1) with a diameter of 469.6 m to reflect as much light as the moon. I then looked what you claimed up on Wikipedia. Wikipedia says that only the bright spot was as bright as the full moon which is very different from what people typically understand from the ambiguous description you gave which explains why I calculated a radius which is very different from the actual radius.
Why is there a green orange frame (from Sci Show) in the tumbnail and not the regular red blue one?
Wait what happened to the 2? Is it still up there?
what about thos nocturnal animals?
If we already had a space elevator this could actually be a viable thing for specific applications.
I like that sciShow space presents things in a non-"na na na na goo-goo, stick your head in doo-doo" anti-Russian undertone, instead expressing genuine regret that an interesting scientific experiment failed, regardless of borders or politics.
Sebi One they have to be unbiased to how they present the information, because that's what makes them different from argumentative material
Sebi One boo boo not goo goo lol
At 2:20 you state that mylar is a thin reflective material.
But mylar is not reflective on its own, it's just a transparent polymer.
Mylar is made reflective by depositing a thin layer of aluminium onto it.
Somewhere, Znamiya 2 caused some children to believe in alien UFOs.
Hey Elon, doing this would mean solar power collection works at night.
~Elon launches a bunch of these next week~
solar sails seem like they would only work in one direction; away from the sun. How would changing the orientation change the direction of movement?
If you put permanent installation mirrors in orbit around the sun. Could you not use the to launch ships to near light speed then build another at the next star & the next star & the next star. have 2 lane byways for slowing & accelerating the ships. ?
Yes those are some of the proposed solar highways people have been coming up with over the years, of course we are talking about projects on a far bigger scale then anything we have attempted sofar.
Although it should be understood the acceleration on even something so elaborate would be incredibly slow, it would still take decades to get anywhere.
They should use these to create a highly focused beam on a solar panel power plant, so that it can work at night. The results could be interesting at least.
Quite fascinating
Um excuse me Tesla wanted to make a "Peace Ray." ;)
That sounds fun, lets try it.
lol it's SyromyAtnikov, where did you get the other O from??
What about using this for mars?
Of course the soviets wanted to extend the work day.
Watch someone die in space because they wanted to take a selfie in the space mirror.
PaleGhost69 You make that sound like a terrible tragedy...
PaleGhost69 Hey, at least they can claim *1ST!!* And for the, ahem, FIRST time no one will really care.
The photo would end up looking garbage, because it would be all white.
I could have been useful for lighting up metropolitan areas when conserving nature's rhythms is moot at this point or for keeping solar power plants running 24/7.
Shout-out to the Planetary Society and its Kickstarter backers for getting solar sails up in space once again!
WERNSTROM!
reallyfunatparties I read that right as he mentioned "the mirror hit a snag" and started laughing really hard
LOL
reallyfunatparties Futurama reference 😀
The very same.
3:23 - did he say a prom dress rocket? Man I bet that thing takes off fast!
Are you guys really not covering the neutron star merger detection via gravitational waves?
What is the plausibility of this type of Technology being used in unison with solar panels to make solar energy more sustainable?
Would need to be a highly coordinated effort but obviously if someone funds it then this is doable, although we need to consider what effects this will have on our atmosphere long term.
Wouldn't reflecting light back to earth make global warning even worse?
no
Oh they are making space mirrors to reflect some sun light back
"No one is trying create a second moon in the sky.."
China: Hold my baijiu.
I have a small pedantic request.
I really like how SciShow has adopted SI units, but could the spelling of the SI units be non-americanised as well? "meter" is not a unit of distance, "metre" is.
A "meter" is a device used for measuring something.
You should put more imagens and videos in this videos
Do you imagine the cost to send to space a 20m wide mirror ? In which reality could they have sent an army of them that could've been of any use at all ?
Now, what is it as bright as a full moon or was it barely visible with the naked eye?
Well the exact spot where they pointed it would be bright, but you wouldn't see much anywhere else. Kind of how mirrors work...
Would the sails be in a Molniya orbit?
I believe the fine folks at the Plantary Society would agree, Solar Sailing is the way to go when taking about moving things through space when your not crunched for time.
What would happen if we covered the moon's surface with highly reflective material though?
I wonder if Earth saw herself in the space mirror and broke into tears both of happiness and grief.
What the city of Chengdu in China in 2020?
When we send satellites into space, do we leave them behind considering that the earth spins away from it, or does it stay in earths orbit around the sun?
Earths gravity keeps them spinning around itself, most fall back down to Earth eventually and some mishaps have had stuff shoot out into the solar system.
This makes me think of a Futurama episode.
I want to see a call of duty level where they use a space mirror to light up the ground
4:39 To shreds you say?
There is a cartoon from 1991 that was about DEW solar beam somrthing...i don't remember the name of it....
Why no mention of the more recent light sail program the Planetary Society is involved with?
If I were president I'd fund an American with the same goal and call it Znamya 3: From Russia with Love.
Gotta respect some things about the Soviet Union.
"Want to extend daylight hours by making a giant mirror?"
"Will it mean we have to stop seeing how far down we can dig?"
"Nope."
"Then eff yeah!"
solar sails sounds like a good fit for the tinny box sats that are being made now.
Indeed, and they are being used to propel CubeSats. The NEA Scout (Near-Earth Asteroid Scout) spacecraft that will fly aboard the first Space Launch System--SLS--rocket to fly is a CubeSat, and it has a square solar sail (which will be boom-supported, rather than spin-deployed-and-rigidized [both types work well]). Its solar sail will propel it--without using any "fuel," besides the recoil of the solar photons that reflect off its shiny surface--to fly by and examine multiple NEAs. Also:
To clean up near-Earth space (which is a junkyard, whose refuse is hurtling in orbit at velocities up to 5 miles per second [8 km/s]), deorbit sails are increasingly being installed on satellites. (Some are spin-deployed, while others use inflatable support booms [whose inflation gas comes from subliming, solid benzoic acid, which was used in the Echo and Pageos balloon satellites], depending on the manufacturer, and on the type of spacecraft the deorbit sail is designed to bring down from orbit.) Plus:
When deployed at the end of the satellites' useful service lives, the deorbit sails (which always face in one direction, toward the Sun) produce a slight but constant photonic retro-thrust, on that side of the orbit; this lowers that side of the orbit, so that the satellite, with its attached and deployed deorbit sail, grazes the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. The open sail increases this aerodynamic drag, and it--along with the deorbit sail's photonic retro-thrust--ultimately slows the satellite enough so that it re-enters the atmosphere and burns up like a meteor.
Turn the mirrors around and solve global warming? How big of an array (in terms of % of sky covered) would it take to change temperature by a few degrees?
The concept you're looking for is called a "solar shade". As with all geoengineering there are problems and risks, but it's possible it may be worth it to try if we don't drastically change course soon.
Global warming is natural, we are only speeding the process up. Volcanoes spew out a lot of CO2 and not to mention wild fires, both of which are not man made.
Would a astronaught near Pluto who looks at his hand in space see it aswell as one in earth orbit? Or would it be darker the further from the sun you are
What a cool guy
feels as though that increasing daylight hours in the frozen north would not be good for the melting Ice
This couldn't be good for global warming. Maybe the opposite could be done to reflect some sun light back to space instead of reaching earth. Imagine a dyson swarm of these things in orbit between earth and the sun to combat global warming.
Think about this:
If the sun was out 24/7 around the world, the world could function on a 24/7 shift. It would mean relying less on first shift workers, and hire more people for production with less time worked.
I just imagine on the first test. The sun setting, then the satellites activate, daylight begins to illuminate the sky as scientists cheer in success, only for a world destroying heat ray to form, and sweep the Earth's surface. It sounds like some Rick and Morty stuff.
Because we haven't sufficiently messed with the climate or with wildlife or with our own circadian rhythms... this should really go in the category of "We can, but that doesn't mean we should." As for "everyone being happy," I rather doubt the average agricultural worker was thrilled about having their working day extended. I grew up on farms. It's hard enough work without some bureaucrat deciding that the workday should be longer.
Hurray it's time to build the death star!
It's such a cool idea though. But we have a lot of other things to consider about if we are to use that technology. If we work longer, factories open for longer, it can contributes to global warming, also having the sun for longer than usual can also rise the temperature of earth. And human could exploit thus technology and can cause even worse global warming and other problems. I'm glad it contributed to other researches though. This is a great example of great innovations coming from the craziest ideas 😊😊💖💖🌌🌌
Plants absorb CO2 in the day. Aside from that, global warming could be helped by reflecting light over the deserts, cooling them by causing a large shadow, while also lighting up solar powerplants even more.
i was wondering if we direct more light to earth, could it make our planet warmer? (global warming)
Hey! Your voice is similar to Penn Jillette! Almost identical, actually!
"Everybody would be happy" except for the overworked farmers stumbling around like sleep-deprived zombies, you mean. The serfs can work 24/7, comrade -- if they die of it, that's what serfs are here for.
No thanks.
Or just add nightshift
Sails are neat, but I worry using a bunch of mirrors to reflect more sunlight to the Earth would just exacerbate climate change. @.@
would that extra daylight bring in extra heating? because that's exactly what we need -.-
By the time we've made it, global warming would've sorted it out.
Its funny how often people talking about solar sails, a far more advanced tech then regular sails, get the facts about even the regular sails wrong... its been decades - hundred years, since sails worked like this. Now its primarily the principle of an airfoil - aerodynamic profile... utilizing mostly the pull from low pressure on one side of the "wing" sail, rather than the PUSH into the sail... Just kinda funny to get the easy thing wrong while talking correctly (hopefully) about space tech :D
I can think of about a dozen reasons offhand why that Pandora's box should stay closed.
I wonder if that type of technology would be useful for planets that are tidal locked to their parent star in order to expand the habitable strip into the dark side of a planet...
Provided we have the tech to even make it there in the first place...
Given the existence of dark energy and matter, could there be a dark gravity?
Znamya or "знамя" does not translate as a "banner", google is wrong. =D
It translates more like a flag or a pennant.
Love your show! =)