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Who needs street lights? Chinese city plans fake moon
In Chengdu, there is reportedly an ambitious plan afoot for replacing the city's street lights: boosting the glow of the real moon with that of a more powerful fake one.
The capital of the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan plans to launch an illumination satellite in 2020. According to an article in People's Daily, the artificial moon is "designed to complement the moon at night", though it would be eight times as bright. The "dusk-like glow" of the satellite would be able to light an area with a diameter of between 10 and 80km (six to 50 miles), while the precise illumination range could be controlled within tens of metres – enabling it to replace street lights.
The vision was shared by Wu Chunfeng, the chairman of the private space contractor Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co (Casc), at a national mass innovation and entrepreneurship event held in Chengdu last week. Wu reportedly said testing had begun on the satellite years ago and the technology had now evolved enough to allow for launch in 2020. It is not clear whether the plan has the backing of the city of Chengdu or the Chinese government, though Casc is the main contractor for the Chinese space programme.
Also at The Guardian and Inverse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:13PM (2 children)
Thanks for crunching the numbers! I think you forgot to account for the fact that TFA says this will be 8 times brighter than the moon, though ;)
It's smaller than "The Moon" but considerably larger than many things we call "moons" in our solar system.
The largest mirror humanity has ever sent into space is just 2.5m in diameter. This one had a mass of about 1 tonne. There are plans (with endless delays) to up humanity's game by pushing to a whopping 6.5m, with a mass of about half a tonne (and this one is not designed for reflecting visible light, although I imagine it'll do a reasonable job).
Since those numbers assume the thing is directed... I don't even want to think about how big the reaction wheels to stabilize a mirror over a thousand times wider would be.
Hence the funny smell!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday October 19 2018, @03:15PM
From my previous comment, emphasis added:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 19 2018, @10:01PM
To be fair, the biggest mirrors you mention are designed to be extremely precise.
At the other end of the spectrum, spy sats already grew to an estimated 100m diameter, probably not as precise because of the wavelengths they address.
Those mirrors would be closer to the spy sat structure than to JWST, especially because the chinese probably won't obsess about a few rays being reflected accidentally towards Mongolia.