this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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fun fact, u can also boil opposed spy satelites with that setup
I doubt it, calibrating a focal point to a stationary, relatively nearby target, say a hundred metres or so, is fairly simple, but to apply that to a satellite, a moving target (with a changing velocity if we are talking about a satellite in an eccentric or molnya orbit) either in high or low earth orbit, that's a distance of between 200-20,000kms.
Even a satellite in perfectly circular orbit is constantly changing its distance relative to a point on the ground, meaning you have to constantly adjust the focal point of the mirrors. At 250km, your field of mirrors (say, a 100m circle of them) would describe about 0.023 degrees of curvature, almost completely flat.
And that's before accounting for atmospheric attenuation and scattering of the light.
On a clear night with many gw of laser energy, maybe you could peel the skin off a low orbit satellite, but even that would be impractical.
Can you elaborate?
The mirrors used in these kind of installations are typically rotated to track the sun. Idk if it could take down a satellite but I would imagine they could set nearby things on fire by adjusting mirror angles.
Atmospheric scattering would make that effectively impossible, even if you could rotate the mirrors quickly enough. The light rays would be too unfocussed to properly heat up anything in orbit
I know you don't know.
I do.
And no it cannot, that's only in fallout New Vegas. This is not possible to weaponize because: physics.