Elon Musk Announces Plan to Control Climate by Surrounding Earth in Adjustable Satellites

https://pawb.social/post/34365323

Elon Musk Announces Plan to Control Climate by Surrounding Earth in Adjustable Satellites - Pawb.Social

Lemmy

That’s not how weather works you moron.
Technically, physics does allow a satellite-based method to deal with climate change. Economics, on the other hand, does not. You would need to chuck an unfathomable amount of mass into orbit.
Yeah, that’s why.
Do you though? I mean, a satellite orbiting the sun between the earth and the sun could cast a large shadow, right?

That’s… Not how shadows work… Or orbital mechanics… Or economics…

His suggestion, impossible as it is, is slightly less impossible than this.

If the sun was a point light source that is accurate. It is not though. You would need an absolutely enormous sat to cast a shadow that would actually affect our weather. Plus you would also need a way to keep it in position as the solar radiation would push it out of position quickly.
Not really. Case in point - the Moon. It’s absolutely massive, like several orders of magnitude larger than any satellite we’ve ever launched, and when it happens to line up just right between the Earth and the Sun, the umbra is only like 150km wide.