Why We Love the Sun 

‍

At Reflect Orbital, we spend a lot of time thinking about the sun. We obsessively think about its unmatched power in our solar system, the benefits it already delivers to humanity and our natural world, and the many more it could deliver if harnessed properly.  We believe there’s value in spreading the word about how the sun gives life to everything here on earth. Here are just a couple of facts  that often surprise people.

‍

• The sun produces enough energy in one hour to power all of humanity for an entire year. With every second that passes, the sun outputs more than 384 septillion watts of energy. The Earth intercepts one two-billionth of this amount each second - about 173,000 terrawatts. Humanity’s total energy consumption every second, worldwide, is 19 terawatts. In other words, the Earth receives about 10,000x more energy from the sun than we currently use - and an infinitesimally small (4.95 x 10^-24 for math purists) proportion of the sun’s total output.

‍

• The sun powers virtually everything on earth. Every calorie of food and every drop of fuel. Oil and gas are the remnants of organisms (plants and algae) that captured sunlight millions of years ago before getting buried and compressed over geological timeframes. That is the source of fuel we dig up. When we burn gasoline, we are tapping into energy from the Carboniferous period 300-350 million years ago.

‍

• The sun is approximately 1.3 million times larger in volume than Earth. Put another way: about 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun if you melted them down.

‍

Humans have always burned prehistoric carbon matter for fuel. We did it with wood for millions of years, before turning to coal as long ago as 25,000 B.C.E. The ancient Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians used crude oil more than 5,000 years ago and there are records of natural gas in Ancient Persia before 1000 B.C.E. Oil and gas were commercialized on an industrial scale in the mid-19th century, while renewables were added to the mix roughly 50 years ago. 

‍

At each point in this long arc of history, the transition to “the next thing” - the next source of energy that mankind could harness to sustain itself, to live increasingly healthy, progressive and productive lives - looked like a radical departure. Until it didn’t - and until it felt very obvious in hindsight. 

‍

At Reflect Orbital, we believe we are at a similar inflection point - but with a twist. Instead of proposing a new carbon matter to burn as fuel, we want to tap right into the original source - the thing that powers and has always powered everything else, the sun - and direct it safely and precisely to where it is needed most here on earth.

‍

Humans  do this already with solar panel technology, which has made tremendous progress over the last several decades. But despite its effectiveness as a power source, solar represents just ~7% of global electricity generation (and about 2-3% of total energy consumption). This number can and should be higher, and this is what Reflect Orbital is committed to tackling. 

‍

If we get it right, we make clean, abundant energy available on demand. Orbital mirrors can elevate humanity’s consumption of solar energy, foregoing the need to burn ancient geological matter by delivering energy that already exists directly. And right now is the moment to pursue this idea. Space has never been more accessible. Humanity’s energy requirements have never been greater and, in the AI era, will become even greater still. There are $3.5 trillion of solar assets globally that sit ready to add net new clean energy to the world’s grid infrastructure.

‍

Reflect Orbital is in the early stages of building something we believe will deliver extraordinary benefits to humanity and our natural planet. We are actively hiring, so if you think this is a mission worth joining, please get in touch with us!

‍