I believe the 8.4% figure, but that represents the total light scattered from the lunar surface, not just reflected towards Earth. If your increased it to 100% via Sock Munkey’s original suggestion, the total light from the Moon would be about 12 times brighter.
Using Mangetout’s idea, the whole lit part of the Moon would be as bright as the Sun. Since the Moon is about as large (as seen from the Earth) as the Sun, it would be like having two Suns whenever the Moon was full. This would cause huge climate changes.
There was a thread about this not too long ago, but a hamster flail has failed to turn up anything. IIRC, the Russians don’t have the money to put another one up. They’d really like to, since they figure they could use the thing to thaw out Siberia. Ah, found it.
For instance, you could light up New York, but everyone else, a massive number of people would go without moonlight, if I understand correctly.
What impact would this have? If the lunar influence on tides was still present, would we miss moonlight? Streetlights are used even in full moons and nobody panics when we have a new moon.
Some animals and insects would be effected, but I can’t, off the top of my head, think of a serious downside.
Hmmm. I can certainly read the newspaper headlines by the light of even a half-moon. I’ll try to remember to see whether I can read the regular text next week when we have a full moon.
Well, the Russians, in addition to thawing out Siberia, felt that it’d be handy to help in disasters. One of the biggest headaches rescue workers have is in getting enough light to see after the sun goes down, so this thing could be used to illuminate such areas.
I don’t know about the climate changes, but you can bet that bats (not to mention owls) would have a hell of problem if this thing was used, and since they eat a large number of insects, we’d be in trouble as well.
*cost of mylar to cover i/2 the moon
*cost of maintenance (moon wasnt always that pockmarked)
*cost fo sending that stuff to the moon
*cost of manpower to send and cover 1/2 the moon
and even if that were done
*moon isnt always shining on one particular spot on the earth
*it’ll freak out the aliens passing by our solar system
*moon tourism will decline (Dont step on the Mylar!!)
*street lights and electricity are cheaper
Not quite correct; the amount of light that the moon intercepts is that which passes through a circle the diameter of the moon; the amount of light required to illuminate the Earth to daylight levels is that which passes through a circle the diameter of the Earth - the total reflected light from the moon would be insufficient to illuminate the entire night side of the Earth to daylight levels…
…however, there would be no real need to shine it on the oceans, maybe that would just about compensate.
The biggest problem is that the moon isn’t always where you want it; the extreme case of which being the solar eclipse; the moon is not visible from the night side of Earth in such circumstances.
Now as regards damage to the array from falling rocks, the model based on millions of mobile robots would be able to cope; the machines would have to be networked together in order to focus the array; if an impact took ouit a big swathe of them the system would be programmed to cope by making the adjjacent functioning robots flow into the gap, others would flow into the gap left by them and so on until the gap ‘bubbled’ back to one of the automated solar powered factories that churns out the robots, where more units would be manufactured to replace them.
A focusable moon array would enable us to control the weather pretty effectively too (at what ecological cost though) - the evaporation of oceans could be accelerated to provide precipitation; wind currents could be modified by setting up artificial convection systems…
Yeah, I got the original bit wrong. You’d make it moon 12 times brighter by painting it white.
Using Mangetout’s mirror system to illuminate the whole of the earth, you’d achieve a maximum power density of about 75 watts per metre square, but that’s still well below the 1,000 watts per square metre of full sunlight.
>and use to defend the Earth against asteroid strike -
Wow, this really beats the “giant rocket with giant H-Bombs fired at the asteroid which only succeeds into breaking it into pieces” plan.
What if you designed a reflector made by having a Mylar sheet, shaped by metal struts, orbitted around the Earth (over the poles so it’s always in sunlight)? It would be controlled from Earth to aim it as required.
The launch could be so cool: you make the struts springy, scrunch it all up, shoot it up into orbit, and push the button, and, “SPROING” it would deploy.
I was just going to ask if Dopers had ever saved the world before, and how many times we have done it.
Then the question came up: what if the wrong person was in charge of the giant reflector, and was using it to rule the world by slagging anyone they wanted to. So maybe it would destroy the world actually.
So do we tell everyone about this discovery, or do we decide there are Some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know?
Mary, if we can think this up, there are thousands sitting around the world with the same thoughts. Some might happen to be in government or corporate thinktanks that focus on strange ideas so the more practical people on the implementation end have things to do (think DARPA and Bell Labs before it became Lucent). None of this is really new, nor will it be feasible for a long time to come.
I’d say it was feasible now, just not cheap. That’s the problem with spaceflight. It will be cheap one day, provided folks are willing to spend lots of money on it now. If they’re not, then it’s going to take that much longer before it happens.
It’s entirely too late for me to remember where, but I’ve read sci fi stories and various articles and whatnot about taking the mylar moon idea one step further.
The idea is that you actually create an artificial ring around the entire earth, similar to saturn’s rings.
Actually maybe it was mars or something, anyway…
The ring is made of mylar or whatever mirrors, alligned and tunable and what not so all the light could be reflected back.
If you put it up there, all the way around the world, and kept it right on the night/day line, the entire thing could be in direct sunlight all the time, it wouldn’t block light to the earth OR the moon, and its surface area worked out to be some amazingly huge number.
The amount of sunlight you could harness with that is simply astronomical. Pun intended. Eh, it’s late, ok?
Magnetout your idea about using it to control weather intrigue me… you could do some amazing things with that, if you really wanted to…
Let’s say we did cover the moon with mirrors, and could focus it any way we wanted. Big-ass remote control at NASA or whatever. You probably wouldn’t need ALL of the mirrors focused in one spot at the same time for much of anything… you could send back two or three or what the heck, 20, reflections. Light up two dozen cities at a time, instead of just one.
You could learn to focus the beams into a serious weapon, this is true. But a weapon used for good purposes is called a “TOOL”, and what a tool this would be!
Imagine we build another titanic… it once again is on collision course with an iceberg. Only this time we can see it… don’t move the ship, divert 10% of the mirrors and melt that sucker right there where it floats!
Keep a percent of them focused on the ocean near the jet streams… blast huge clouds of moisture into the air, rain in the deserts whenever you wanted it.
Heck, if you got that kind of control over it and that much raw energy… and since we’re dreaming anyway…
why not re-engineer the planet? Carve canals with the light that make the population of panama wonder why they have a big swimming pool in a couple generations. Build new rivers, new lakebeds, tear down mountains… raise new ones by blasting holes all the way through the crust, instant volcano! Islands anywhere you want them, custom orders, allow 6 to 8 hundred years for them to cool.
And you could read your newspaper at night without a flashlight. q;}
No, sorry. The Moon can never be brighter than the Sun. When you use a mirror or magnifying glass to “magnify” sunlight, the light received per solid angle is never more than from the Sun. You’re just getting sunlight from a larger solid angle.
With the Moon covered in focusable mirrors, the brightest you can get is a second Sun, and that over only a portion of the Earth.
