In another indication of MAGA’s contempt for the public interest and service to special interests and their profits, which includes a livable environment, Trump’s FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has given approval for a company to start wreaking havoc on the night sky. This is another example of Trump and MAGA elites doing whatever they or Trump want to do, no matter how toxic or even lethal it might be to the public interest.
Just the facts, not the context
The FCC: As usual, the MSM’s reporting rigidly sticks to the facts, which are alone are quite ugly. That allows reporting to completely ignore the far more important uglier context in which the US government has green-lighted development of night sky destruction over the entire planet. Before Trump and MAGA elites converted it to a service operation for for-profit special interests, the FCC was an agency that served the public interest. Those days are over. The FCC will stay corrupted as long as Trump and MAGA elites control government, and maybe a lot longer than that.
Much of the MSM does not connect environmental risks to the FCC’s use of categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or to the broader pattern of environmental review being bypassed for orbital systems. NEPA requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of actions they carry out, fund, or license, and to consider alternatives and public input — that was ignored. The FCC classified the system as communications infrastructure and thereby avoided any environmental impact assessment. MSM reporting is mostly a balanced “critics fear X, agency says Y” narrative. That ignores the fact that environmental concerns and public input were excluded from MAGA’s decision‑making.
Polluting the night sky with sunlight: The company is called Reflect Orbital. Its for-profit plan is to put at least 50,000 fridge-sized satellites in orbit. Mirrors about 60×60 ft will unfold and where light is reflected down to will be controlled by light buyers. The plan is to make money by reflecting sunlight light for solar farms, big rescue operations, city street lighting, crop growth, big festivals, annoying the neighbors**, and Dog only knows what defense uses the military can dream up. Reflect Orbital will sell to any crackpot, group, company or government that can afford to pay. One gets sunlight by logging into a website, paying $5,000/mirror/hour (~3‑mile‑wide patch of light from 1 mirror), inputting the GPS coordinates, and then waiting for sunlight after dark. No one knows how big the market will be for sure, but there is marketing hype. Link, link, link, link, link
** OK, that one was just made up, but it is possible
Shafting the public interest – the MSM squeaks defense: In addition to confusing plants and animals about what time of year it is, the reflected light will scatter and generally make the night sky even brighter than it is now. The MSM reports squeaks of objection like (1) an expert claiming that this “cannot be considered to serve the public interest”, (2) this wastes tax dollars by wrecking federally funded astronomical facilities, (3) doing Dog only knows what to people, plants and wildlife.
The business & political reality – this is isn’t what it seems: Two different very things are going on here, both of which stink. One is Reflect Orbital running a Ponzi scheme or something akin to that to scam investors. Buying 1 mirror for $5,000 for 1 hour gets you a spot of light ~3 miles in diameter. The light intensity in that spot is low, about equal to 4 full moons on a clear night. That is light intensity is ~10-fold lower than typical city street lighting. That is not enough to do much of anything other than (1) confuse plans and animals, (2) screw up the night sky for serious astronomy work, and (3) maybe annoy annoying neighbors if that’s the goal. Ripping off investors in a pump and dump operation makes sense. Selling weak sunlight for serious uses makes no sense.
The marketing propaganda on this is what you would expect. People and institutions trying to cash in on this lunacy say things like, “we’re experimenting with a potentially groundbreaking clean‑energy technology”. Whew, that sounds respectable. Investors can tell themselves they are visionaries in “space climate tech”, even if Reflect Orbital goes bankrupt. By contrast, saying “this is a ridiculous, harmful nutjob project enabled by captured regulation” (in this case, our corrupted, anti-public interest FCC) sounds activist or woke. That’s bad, really bad.
So that stinks. Investor damage will be mostly limited to people who get ripped off. Whatever environmental damage there would be cannot be predicted. The company will probably fizzle out long before 50,000 mirrors are put in orbit, which would limit collateral damage to the environment. At least one can hope that’s the outcome.
The very big stink
The far bigger, much worse stink that’s going on is directly related to Trump and his MAGA authoritarianism and kleptocracy. That’s where the real rubber hits the road. The FCC greenlighting this operation has massive implications that facilitate future extremely bad things happening. This is a tragedy of the commons story. This FCC approval established a US agency signing off on space‑based lighting as “communications infrastructure” with no environmental review and no public comment. That approval moved the Overton window for any future scheme that relies on screwing up the night sky for profit or authoritarian purposes. From this, special interests and authoritarian MAGA government can pivot from “solar at night” to advertising, defense purposes, or data‑linked services (1) without asking for authority over the commons (the night sky), or (2) any environmental or public interest impact assessment whatsoever. This FCC approval was made in secret. Future approvals will be the same.
The real “product” is arguably not light, but orbital rights. This is precedent that private interests can take and use low Earth orbit to alter planetary lighting for paying customers. That is an asset that can be traded, repurposed, or taken over by other actors if Reflect Orbital flops. The public has nothing to say about it.
Q1: Can one reasonably argue that this scheme isn’t crackpot from the standpoint of people trying to financialize and profit from the sky, i.e., is it a rational extraction scheme from a system that pays for investor upside and treats planetary damages and the damaged public interest as society’s problem?
Q2: If this space mirrors scheme is treated as “smoke and mirrors” because the physics and economics of the advertised use case are crap, is that crappy reality sufficient to con regulators, journalists, and investors while corporate interests get solid claims on a planetary commons at our expense?
Info links:
A Sun that Never Sets – Reflect Orbital’s Big Plans for Upending Solar Energy
California startup’s plan to sell sunlight at night sparks controversy
FCC Authorization — Permission given as in the public interest in emergent innovative “communications” technology that promotes new services and economic growth (that is misleading and bad‑faith, arguably a lie); The FCC says that light, astronomy, health, and environmental harms fall outside the Commission’s remit over radio spectrum and thus are not valid bases for denial (the same)
FCC approves space mirror satellite — and bypassed environmental review to do it
California startup pitches 50,000 space reflectors to extend daylight
, but they do not come close to treating it as the critical constitutional or democracy emergency it actually is. What Trump and MAGA elites are doing is not extraordinary. It is catastrophic! That’s far beyond the MSM’s milquetoast extraordinary.