Here comes the sun, and I say....

I suspect I'll be long gone before one of two things happens: One, our planet ends up as some sort of near total hellscape - environmental collapse, Waterworld - where the only people living comfortably are the progeny of Elon Musk and company, who will be safely ensconced in some geodesic dome or underground paradise, eating Impossible burgers, hanging out with the by then late Elon Musk via next gen AR/IR headsets, and congratulating each other that they've saved the white race. Or, two: "they" - the scientists, the techies, the nerds - figure out how to save and sustain the world for more than just our overlords.

I do hope it's the latter, and it will likely only happen if some idea(s) that now seem pretty crazy-pants actually turn out to be a good thing.

Reflect Orbital is one such outfit.

They caught my eye because their idea is rigging up "a constellation of in-space reflectors" so that they can sell "sunlight after dark."

The startup is developing satellites that would deploy large mirrors to precisely reflect sunlight onto specific points on the ground. Rings of satellites in sun-synchronous orbit would follow the terminator, or the line that separates night and day, providing additional sunlight before dawn and after dusk.

According to Reflect’s two co-founders, CEO Ben Nowack and CTO Tristan Semmelhack, this extra sunlight could increase the amount of solar power delivered to the electricity grid. Instead of building more solar farms, the pair thinks we can simply increase the amount of power generated at the ones that already exist. (Source: Tech Crunch)

As far as I can figure from LinkedIn, Ben is in his mid-twenties, and is a graduate of Boston's Wentworth Institute of Technology. If nothing else, it's nice to see a brainiac who didn't go to MIT, Caltech, or Stanford.

But speaking of Stanford, Tristan appears to be in his early twenties, and is on leave from Stanford.

Not surprisingly, Reflect Orbital is being nurtured by some of the bro-iest of tech bros: Shaun Maguire (PhD: Caltech) of Sequoia Capital and Winklevoss Capital (founders: the Winklevoss Twins, perhaps best known for suing tech overlord Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he stole their idea for Facebook while they were all at Harvard. Armie Hammer played them in The Social Network.)

Oh, I absolutely hope that Reflect Orbital succeeds in coming up with a cost-effective way to solar power everything. We're going to need it, especially since cyber and AI are stuch energy hogs. But I'm really in it for the extra daylight.

I hate when Daylight Savings Time ends and we enter into the darkest hours. Living on the early edge of a time zone, in the relatively northern latitudes, it gets dark too damned early. I'm already counting the days until late January/early February when the daylight at the end of the day glimmers a slightly appreciable bit long. And the day when we Spring Ahead and get some serious daylight later in the day is pretty much my high holiday. 

How nice it would be to be able to take an early evening walk in December and have it still be light out. Without - as the Daylight Savings Time haters hate on - borrowing that light from the early morning. 

Yay, that!

On Ben Nowack's LinkedIn page, he has the tagline We sell sunlight after dark.

First, I want to congratulate Ben on having a concise and pithy tagline that pretty much says what his company does. The only equivalent I can remember ever seeing is a van I used to spot on my Route 128 commute that had its motto on the side panel: We clean blinds. 

But mostly, I like the idea of mo' better sunlight. I hope they don't screw up the animal kingdom, or nature in its entirety, or rain failed drones and satellites down on our sun-seaking heads. But what's not to like about sunlight?

We sell sunlight after dark.

I may not live long enough to be buying, but you go, Ben!