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Re:Russian crowdfunded reflector satellite aims to be “brigh... by timthelion on Thursday March 03, 2016 @07:01AM (#11216303)
So, working with 4Km2... There are 13 million square kilometers of arible land on earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land . If the virtical farm is strung up with 400 meters of 10cm layers, that makes 4000 layers. That would be 16 000 square kilometers of farming area, or a bit over 0.1% of all arible land. I think that with modern vertical farming, using a 24 hour year around light source, the farming surface can produce several times the avarage arible land production. Lets say 4 times... That would make almost 0.5% of the world farm production in just one tiny area. So it would take just 200 such constructions to replace tradtional farming entirely...
Re:Russian crowdfunded reflector satellite aims to be “brigh... by pjc50 on Thursday March 03, 2016 @08:54AM (#11216793)
If you have 4000 layers, you need 4000 times as much light, so you need a 16000km^2 orbital mirror focusing on your farm's elaborate set of light-pipes. The highly focused light, like a CSP plant, would ignite birds that flew into the beam. At that scale it would probably alter the local climate, given the amount of heat transferred to the air.
Re:Russian crowdfunded reflector satellite aims to be “brigh... by supermatt on Thursday March 03, 2016 @09:10AM (#11216878)
Few questions:

- How does a mirror make the foliage transparent?

- How does transparent foliage absorb energy for photosynthesis?

- How do you boost the energy from the light 16000 times (4000 layers * "lets say 4 times") without destroying the plants (and probably a lot more)?

- What are these <10cm crops we can replace the current unwieldy crops with?

Re:Russian crowdfunded reflector satellite aims to be “brigh... by o_s_m on Thursday March 03, 2016 @07:05AM (#11216318)
You need arable soil for all 4000 layers. You will be taking valuable topsoil from just as much land.
Re:Russian crowdfunded reflector satellite aims to be “brigh... by timthelion on Thursday March 03, 2016 @07:11AM (#11216334)
That is not how aquaponics and vertical farming work. They use solulable nutrients which are either gained through a nutrient cycle (the water flows down to a pool which has fish in it), or via mining of otherwise hard to get nutrients. Soil is not used. While the source of all these nutrients is a problem, it is comparible to the huge quantities of petrolium based fertilizers that we use today. It is bad, but what we have now is bad too...
Re:Russian crowdfunded reflector satellite aims to be “brigh... by saiya-jin on Thursday March 03, 2016 @09:27AM (#11216969)
... so you are proposing a bad idea that seems pretty wrong from multiple aspects. generally hydroponics is a sht cheap substitute for real growing for those who cannot afford quality vegetables (sadly, I sometimes fall down that hole too and then regret this decision while eating this tasteless cr*p full of unhealthy chemistry).

no, thank you for many reasons