"China to launch Sun Beam weapons sats?" Topic

3 Posts

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SBminisguy	19 Oct 2018 7:27 a.m. PST
The Chinese government announced plans to launch "artificial moon" satellites to bounce sunlight down onto cities at night to provide illumination that replaces street lights… BEIJING: China is planning to launch its own "artificial moon" by 2020 to replace street lamps and lower electricity costs in urban areas, state media reported Friday (Oct 19). Being a tech geek and a gamer, I immediately thought of Hermann Oberth's "Solar Space Mirror" idea from the WW2 era. Oberth originally pitched the idea as a way to illuminate cities at night…but German "Wunderwaffe" planners thought, hey we could set fire to cities too! Oberth's 100m space mirror gun obviously never got implemented, but various attempts at defining space solar mirrors for energy and weaponry have kicked around ever since. A single 100m mirror wouldn't do much, but if you had a phased array in orbit you could start fires with it. Absent some military application (perhaps the mirror sats can be used to attack objects in orbit, or host ASAT weapons), this seems like an expensive way to replace street lights. link
Ghostrunner	19 Oct 2018 8:06 a.m. PST
That ought to do wonders for Global Warming…
Cacique Caribe	19 Oct 2018 3:29 p.m. PST
Sounds like Project Icarus on "Die Another Day". They blamed that one also on the North Koreans. Dan j.gifs.com/mZQqB0.gif YouTube link

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