Asri-unix.887 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!sri-unix!WMARTIN@OFFICE-3@Berkeley@CCA-UNIX Wed Mar 3 13:53:16 1982 Orbiting reflectors From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin) That comment from the Soviet publication I quoted (issue #120) about "giant mirror relectors" reminds me of a query I had meant to make long ago. For many years I have supposed that a sensible use of space would be for cities to fund large reflectors orbiting in such a location that they would reflect focussed sunlight on the city at night in winter (or even during the day) in order to keep the city warm enough to make snow melt as it falls and keep any from accumulating. One would think that the snow-removal budget for a major northern city for a few years could pay the cost of such a device, after space industry is commonplace. Is this a feasible idea? Are such orbits possible for northern cities, and would enough energy be reflected to do this? For a daylight operation, I envision the inhabitants seeing two suns, and doubling the sunlight should, I think, do enough good to burn through cloud cover and keep precipitation liquid. Is this so? What more immediate service to me of space science than to enable me to retire my snow shovel? Will Martin (St.Louis, MO) ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.