Sunlight as a Service ☀️
New startup seeks to sell sunlight for $5,000/hr
There’s a new startup which seeks to place 50,000 mirrors in orbit to sell sunlight anywhere on Earth.
The idea is both brilliant and foolish. Here is a comment I saw on social media.
$5,000 an hour. for sunlight. from space.
a startup putting 50,000 mirrors in orbit to sell sunlight anywhere on earth
I thought this was the dumbest idea Ive ever heard
then it clicked
- firefighting aircraft get GROUNDED every night at sunset. pilots cant see terrain. fires burn unchecked for 10 hours straight.
and heres whats wild - water drops are 60% more effective at night. cooler temps. less wind. but nobody can fly.
light up the fire line from orbit. let them work. the US spends $3-5B a year fighting wildfires. this is a rounding error.
- a single late frost in Napa or Florida citrus can wipe out an entire season. $854M in frost losses last year alone.
but the crazy part - the real buyer isnt even the farmer. its the crop insurance company trying to avoid a $500M payout by spending $50k on a few hours of orbital sunlight
- fog costs London Heathrow over $100M a year in delays. fog burns off when sunlight hits the ground. you speed that up by 30 minutes and the value per hour is $500K-$1M. $5k/hour is pocket change
- military forward operating base at night? forget night vision goggles. just light up the whole compound from space and go get it
- 4 million people above the Arctic Circle live in MONTHS of total darkness. depression. productivity drops. everything slows down. you could give entire communities twilight during polar night
- 150,000 babies die or get brain damage every year in developing countries from jaundice because the cure is literally just light and they dont have electricity for it.
beam it down from orbit. no power grid needed.
I went down this rabbit hole for an hour and every use case is more insane than the last
260,000 people from 157 countries on the waitlist. each dropping $1,000-5,000. Sequoia backed them - first space investment since SpaceX. the Air Force already signed a contract.
mirrors weigh 35 lbs and theyre the size of a basketball court. 4-10x brighter than a full moon. built by a 28 year old ex-SpaceX engineer.
this went from “dumbest thing Ive ever seen” to holy shit in about 10 minutes...
Source ~ Jamesoncamp on X
