Saving energy at night: just make the moon brighter!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s a solution to saving some energy costs: brighten the moon, so you can do away with the need for artificial lighting. Brilliant idea from Foreo, a cosmetics company. Apparently their fairness creams are not selling that well.

  • Place billions of reflectors on the moon’s surface, or just paint the moon white with Foreo’s fairness cream.
  • Kiss the dark skies goodbye. Never see the galactic disk again, or any but the brightest stars.
  • Screw up the body clock of just about every living thing on the planet that has one.
  • When the moon and the Sun are up in the sky together, just wear your ray-ban.
  • While the painting crews are up there, we could start a terraforming operation or secretly spirit away some nukes.

Awesome plan. I’m ready to donate. :smiley:

2

The moon isn’t necessarily visible at useful times of the night, and isn’t always fully illuminated anyway.

3

Also, the moon is often visible during the daytime.

4

Great idea, but moonburn is a serious concern. Also, kids with magnifying glasses will try to set night crawlers on fire, although this usually takes a few hours.

5

If we had the energy to do that, we wouldn’t need to worry about saving energy on lighting in the first place.

6

I watched a video recently that showed that if the moon was entirely made of mirrors it would be less useful as a reflector of light than it is now.

So the status quo is pretty much the best you can expect.

7

Never mind that. Now I want a low orbit moon sized disco ball! Never mind world-destroying tidal forces and other minor practicalities. Funding must be diverted to this project immediately!

8

Have we learned nothing from The Mighty Boosh? The moon is unreliable at best.

9

Hey, if we covered the moon with mirrors, it’d be almost invisible, wouldn’t it? Kind of like a cloaking device. All those satellites would just run into it. Screw that.

10

I can’t follow that link from here - in that scenario, is it just tiled with mirrors like a disco ball?

(Because it seems to me that an array of movable mirrors would make it appear almost as bright as the sun (but not as luminant, due to size).

11

since the moon isn’t fully illuminated all the time reflectors wouldn’t always produce the most light.

intersperse the reflectors with phosphorescent materials.

12

True - I guess if you’re going to go to the trouble of making a moons-worth of mirrors, why not just put them in orbit?
(unless they are manufactured on the moon).

13

Plus somebody carved a big “CHA” on the face of it.

14

could have sponsorship and have the illuminations display corporate logos.

15

Here’s a more technological approach. :cool:

16

Pinky and the Brain tried that, but they never got past the “become famous avant-garde painters to raise money to buy the mirrors” stage.

17

As long as he hasn’t scrawled his great Darsh face on it…

18

The moon is more important than the sun. The moon gives us light at night, while the sun only shines in the daytime.

19

My takeaway from that article? It can be done.

Let’s get started!

20

Somebody once proposed that we nuke the moon to create a ring around the earth to give light all night long. Aside from the difficulty of blowing up the moon, the whole idea was idiotic. And the guy, whom I once had the misfortune of knowing, was indeed an idiot.