A startup called Reflect Orbital wants to launch thousands of mirror-bearing satellites to reflect sunlight onto Earth at night and "power solar farms after sunset, provide lighting for rescue workers and illuminate city streets, among other things," reports the New York Times. From the report: It is an idea seemingly out of a sci-fi movie, but the company, Reflect Orbital of Hawthorne, Calif., could soon receive permission to launch its first prototype satellite with a 60-foot-wide mirror. The company has applied to the Federal Communications Commission, which issues the licenses needed to deploy satellites. If the F.C.C. approves, the test satellite could get a ride into orbit as soon as this summer. The F.C.C.'s public comment period on the application closes on Monday. "We're trying to build something that could replace fossil fuels and really power everything," Ben Nowack, Reflect Orbital's chief executive, said in an interview. The company has raised more than $28 million from investors.
[...] Reflect Orbital's first prototype, which will be roughly the size of a dorm fridge, is almost complete. Once in space, about 400 miles up, the test satellite would unfurl a square mirror nearly 60 feet wide. That would bounce sunlight to illuminate a circular patch about three miles wide on the Earth's surface. Someone looking up would see a dot in the sky about as bright as a full moon. Two more prototypes could follow within a year. By the end of 2028, Reflect Orbital hopes to launch 1,000 larger satellites, and 5,000 of them by 2030. The largest mirrors are planned to be nearly 180 feet wide, reflecting as much light as 100 full moons. The company said its goal was to deploy the full constellation of 50,000 satellites by 2035.
How much does it cost to order sunlight at night? Mr. Nowack said the company would charge about $5,000 an hour for the light of one mirror if a customer signed an annual contract for 1,000 hours or more. Lighting for one-time events and emergencies, which might require numerous satellites and more effort to coordinate, would be more expensive. For solar farms, he envisions splitting revenue from the electricity generated by the additional hours of light.
[...] Reflect Orbital's first prototype, which will be roughly the size of a dorm fridge, is almost complete. Once in space, about 400 miles up, the test satellite would unfurl a square mirror nearly 60 feet wide. That would bounce sunlight to illuminate a circular patch about three miles wide on the Earth's surface. Someone looking up would see a dot in the sky about as bright as a full moon. Two more prototypes could follow within a year. By the end of 2028, Reflect Orbital hopes to launch 1,000 larger satellites, and 5,000 of them by 2030. The largest mirrors are planned to be nearly 180 feet wide, reflecting as much light as 100 full moons. The company said its goal was to deploy the full constellation of 50,000 satellites by 2035.
How much does it cost to order sunlight at night? Mr. Nowack said the company would charge about $5,000 an hour for the light of one mirror if a customer signed an annual contract for 1,000 hours or more. Lighting for one-time events and emergencies, which might require numerous satellites and more effort to coordinate, would be more expensive. For solar farms, he envisions splitting revenue from the electricity generated by the additional hours of light.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
WOLFSBURG (ANP/DPA/AFP) - Het Duitse autoconcern Volkswagen heeft vorig jaar flink minder winst geboekt, mede door hoge kosten voor de Amerikaanse importheffingen. De winst na belastingen kelderde met 44 procent tot 6,9 miljard euro. Dat is het laagste niveau sinds 2016, toen het bedrijf miljardenvoorzieningen trof vanwege het dieselschandaal. Volkswagen maakte ook bekend de komende jaren nog meer banen in Duitsland te schrappen.
De omzet van Volkswagen bedroeg 321,9 miljard euro, tegen 324,7 miljard euro in 2024. De wereldwijde verkoop van Volkswagen, dat ook merken als Seat, Skoda, Audi en Porsche heeft, lag op bijna 9 miljoen voertuigen, wat vrijwel vergelijkbaar is met een jaar eerder.
Het bedrijf uit Wolfsburg had ook te maken met hoge kosten bij Porsche door de koerswijziging rond elektrisch rijden bij het sportwagenmerk. Daarbij werd onder meer de lancering van nieuwe elektrische modellen uitgesteld, de bouw van eigen batterijen geschrapt en meer geïnvesteerd in verbrandingsmotoren.
More than 200 applicants fear they will lose places after home secretary suspends study visas from four countries
Sudanese scientists who have been promised research posts at leading UK universities have spoken of their “shock” and “sadness” that their hopes have been dashed after Shabana Mahmood’s decision to end study visas for people from their country.
More than 200 Sudanese postgraduates and undergraduates fear they will no longer be permitted to take up places at 46 universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, with some claiming that their lives have been torn apart by the home secretary’s “blunt” intervention.
Continue reading...Paul Thomas Anderson’s capering clash between a demented repressive regime and ragtag freedom fighters is both cartoonish and deadly serious – and perfectly tuned to its times
Viva la revolution and don’t forget your password, your pronouns, your plaid gown and your gun. One Battle After Another, from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, is the brawling rebel insider of this year’s Oscar race; a state-of-the-nation Hollywood spectacular that feels as disunited and unstable as the country it depicts. The film hates America and it loves it, too. It’s on the side of the angels even when it’s not quite sure who they are. It lights a candle to curse the darkness, and prays to God it hasn’t picked up a stick of dynamite by mistake.
“We have to stay out of politics,” Wim Wenders advised his fellow directors at last month’s Berlin film festival, and yet One Battle After Another is political to its fingertips, hard-wired to the here and now and perfectly anticipating the tenor of Donald Trump’s second term. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, the one-time firebrand turned burnt-out stoner, who belatedly hauls himself off the couch when his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) is captured. Freely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, the film updates the book’s jaundiced post-60s hangover for the ICE-age 2020s as the plot careens from the migrant detention camp to the sanctuary city to uncover a Christian Nationalist cell within the US federal government. The self-styled “Christmas Adventurers” are on a heaven-sent mission to make America great again. They say, “If you want to save the planet, you always start with immigration.”
Continue reading...Club’s former owner leads the polls in spiky mayoral race but is accused of putting forward ‘nothing of substance’
Karim Benzema doesn’t often involve himself in French politics. At the end of January, though, the striker gave a glowing endorsement of Jean-Michel Aulas, the former Lyon president who is leading the city’s mayoral race.
“He has everything it takes to do well,” Benzema said in a video played on the news channel LCI as Aulas was being interviewed. “He’s someone who people listen to, he knows where he wants to go and he has a lot of experience,” the former Real Madrid player added. The Lyon-born striker was later joined by Bafétimbi Gomis in showing support for their former boss.
Continue reading...Regulator fined the multimillionaire £1.8m and banned him from the financial services industry last year
Crispin Odey, the multimillionaire financier fighting various lawsuits relating to allegations of sexual misconduct, is to launch a case against the financial services regulator over his exile from the City.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Odey £1.8m and banned him from the financial services industry last year.
Continue reading...Logical situation of losing to get a better pick has led to big fines but June’s superstar draft created a ‘perfect storm’
Imagine you are the director of football at a crisis-stricken Premier League club in a world where relegation doesn’t exist and the planet’s best teenagers become available for free in a draft every June.
In this alternate universe, you are also aware of something else: the 2026 Premier League draft is one for the ages. Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsí are in it. So are Bayern Munich’s Lennart Karl and Real Madrid’s Franco Mastantuono. Sign one of them and the glory days will suddenly beckon again.
Continue reading...It’s been a troubling season at Tottenham and while there is a slim chance it will end in glory, ignominy is looking more likely
How do you solve a problem such as Tottenham Hotspur? They’re the ninth-richest club in the world, who pride themselves on a thrilling style of play – “To dare is to do” – and have been blessed through the years with a pantheon of household names: Blanchflower, Hoddle, Ardíles, Gascoigne, Bale, Kane, Son. Last August they were seconds from beating Paris Saint-Germain to win the Uefa Super Cup, which would have made them – tenuously – the best team in Europe. Seven months later they’ve wilted into a shell-shocked laughing stock careering towards the Championship. They’re the club that launched a thousand memes.
In this most Spursy of seasons, hiring Mr Fixit Igor Tudor as interim manager looks like being the biggest misstep yet. The Croatian hard man has taken a squad who needed an arm round the shoulder and stuck them in a vice-like headlock. He has openly suggested there’s only three things wrong with them: they can’t run, they can’t score and they can’t defend. You could count the number of fans who backed his appointment on the fingers of Captain Hook’s bad hand, and if three crushing defeats are anything to go by, his shock treatment is going down like a cup of cold West Ham lasagne. Is there any way out?
Continue reading...If anyone can convince politicians and public of the need to pay for a national care service, it’s Louise Casey. With her involved, I now have hope
No government in my lifetime has been dealt a worse hand than Keir Starmer’s. Austerity-broken public services, an empty Treasury, a jittery bond market freaked out by Liz Truss and then stricken by the arrival of Trump 2.0 with his bully-tariffs. Now Britain’s ally is setting the Middle East on fire in a murderous war, exploding oil and gas prices. This needs repeating regularly, lest anyone forgets the obstacles blocking this government’s best intentions for change.
One of those good intentions in the Labour manifesto was the creation of a national care service. Louise Casey, respected troubleshooter, was given a commission to review adult social care and solve its impossible dilemmas. She showed her thinking in a blistering speech last week.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, ahead of May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss the threat to Labour from the Greens and Reform – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
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