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When Russia Tried to Kill The Night
The fantastical Russian project to end the tyranny of darkness forever
The idea sounds almost fantastical. A gigantic mirror, sixty feet across, floating hundreds of miles above the Earth. From it a beam of light reflects, tracing a long arc across the planet below and turning night into day. Fantastic, perhaps, but reality — at least for a few moments back in 1993. In February of that year such a mirror did fly high above the Earth, briefly illuminating a swathe of Europe and Russia.
The mirror formed part of project Znamya, a Russian attempt to shorten long winter nights in the far north. Doing so would have enormous benefits, they thought, saving billions in energy costs and allowing farmers to work long into the night. An orbiting spot beam could come in useful in other ways too: lighting up disaster zones, aiding construction workers or by carving passages through the frozen Arctic waters.
Of course, a single mirror would not be enough for all that. Russia would need dozens, even hundreds, of mirrors placed high above the planet. As each passed, they could — if directed properly — create a pulse of light a few minutes long. To truly turn night into day, as the plan called for, a sequence of mirrors would be needed, each rising as a previous one fell below the horizon.
