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Comment by dietr1ch | Hacker News Reader

To anyone thinking that 18m² isn't that big for how large the space is, please recall how bright reflective things shine during the day when you hit the right angle.

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18x18 is 324m^2

To give an easy visualization for most people (average Americans, really, because most other people in the world already know what a meter looks like), imagine that the average doorknob is about 1m above the floor, so imagine basically the bottom part of a typical interior door is about 1m sq. Now, make a square out of 18 of those pieces wide by 18 pieces high.

Americans will measure with anything but the metric system.

Except for those few of us who grew up interested in science, because science pretty much world-wide (even in the USA) uses metric for pretty near everything. I've used metric for my entire life, and been ridiculed for it that entire time by all the same morons that think any interest in science makes you a "nerd" even if you also happen to play and enjoy sports (despite almost the entire rest of the world standardizing on metric long ago), and despite the fact that most folks in the USA are already using metric themselves every single day. Yet somehow metric is "too hard to learn, waaah!" (It's based on tens, just like our money. Too complicated? Gimme a break!) Hell, our sugary fizzy drinks even all come in 1 and 2 liter bottles, FFS!

And if they do, they will call it things like "square doorknob".

I feel "about a 8 floor building" would be a good ROM :)

At that level of specificity, you could just say that a meter is "about a yard".

So very roughly a 300kW spotlight pointed at a relatively small area (wild guess at around 1km^2, anyone done the maths?)

Edit: A 5km diameter spot illuminated from 600km altitude.

For Americans: this is roughly 3500 sqft.

Whoops, I overcooked my last minute edits while almost asleep. Yeah, I'm was off by 18x there.

Every colleagues watch face.

A gigantic source of light in the sky that lights up a part of the Earth and is too bright to look at is... the sun. I think we're all used to the sun.

everyone’s seen ads before, mind if I put a giant ad in the sky for everyone to look at?

Don't give these ghouls ideas.

The idea of putting a PepsiCo or Coca-Cola ad on the moon dates backs to the 60's, when we first went there.

I personally am _not_ used to seeing the sun after sunset and before sunrise.

Neither is nature, this sounds like an environmental disaster waiting to happen

considering plants grow just fine with grow lights, they don't really care. same with co2, they LOVE CO2

Nature is more than just plants.

> they LOVE CO2

Plants can absorb some more CO2 and it improves their growth slightly but saying they LOVE CO2 is an exaggeration.

They turn it into sugar, what's not to love?

Solar panels aren't nature. Shining lights on solar panels is not going to be an environmental disaster.

If one person owned the sun and could charge all humanity for access to its light then maybe that would be a relevant example

What do you think is being proposed, exactly? Some sort of alternative sun that's going to shine on the entire earth, that we'll all be forced to look at?

No. I used a rhetorical device to highlight a theoretical monopoly we assume would never exist. But imagine I launch a space sail that can cast a shadow on any part of earth I chose. I could block or unblock sunlight at will and grant access only for paying customers.

Is that something that should be permitted?

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