Sometimes the stupid from the Trump regime is so extreme it just burns.
I was trying to ignore the fact that his FCC has approved the application of a company that plans to put up a satellite that wants to use a giant mirror to reflect the sun back to Earth, lighting the night sky for reasons I was not going to look into. All I knew was that astronomers and the Dark Skies folks were opposed to it (duh).
I've been hoping they will get an injunction and stop this sheer idiocy. Maybe they will, but I keep seeing coverage of it so now I know more about it, unfortunately.
Jen Sorensen made a cartoon, and wrote about it in her weekly newsletter:
The company wants to put up 50,000 of these things by 2035. Jen wrote:
For a few years now, the company has been touting the illumination of solar farms at night as the primary reason for the mirrors. Setting aside whether this is feasible or even a priority in a country that is doing its best to undermine solar power, the company is openly promoting other, less noble uses: extending working hours at industrial sites, replacing streetlights in urban areas, and (as I mentioned in the comic) "unforgettable nighttime experiences." Here, have a screenshot from their website:
Is that supposed to be a European city square lit up with a night sun? What part of "light pollution" do these messianic tech bros not understand? What about the people who live in the cities and are trying to sleep there? And we're seriously talking about disrupting the life-sustaining rhythms of the natural world so people can have Instagrammable experiences?
She recommended this November 2025 Scientific American article, which includes this stunning fact:
Each [mirror] would be capable of casting a 5 km-wide beam about four times brighter than the full moon down to Earth.
Imagine how much light a full moon gives. Then think of it being four times brighter, and there being thousands of them in the night sky. Maybe tens of thousands of them, all around the planet.
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