“Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing: Block it out!” –Mr. Burns
Gentlemen, we can do this. In 1995, nuclear power plant tycoon Monty Burns deployed a giant dish over Springfield to deprive citizens of free sunlight and energy. Springfield citizens eventually dismantled the dish, but last week’s eclipse showed us how to do this in a tamper-proof way: BUILD A SECOND MOON.
Eclipse totality lasted only two minutes, but that’s because our existing moon can’t keep still. We can create a stationary moon by launching it into a Lagrangian point.
Any two-body orbital system creates five Lagrangian points, where the combined gravitational forces of the large bodies cancel out the centrifugal force felt by a smaller object, suspending it in place. Anything deployed at these five spots remains parked indefinitely.
One such point happens to sit just between the earth and the sun: L1. We already have a Solar Observatory and Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) parked there, but neither one is big enough to cover the sun. Something moon-sized should do the job nicely.
All we need now is a rocket and a giant balloon. Hey Elon Musk, got any spare SpaceX launchers lying around?
Nice science education on the Lagrangian points, but why would you want to do this?
WORLD DOMINATION.
jk, i don’t know.
I looked it up, and it seems Lagrangian L1 is quite a bit further away than the moon. So the disk may have to be even bigger than the moon.
On the other hand, we don’t have to block out the entire sun. Maybe blocking out a couple of percent would be a good temporary solution to our little global warming problem?
Oh yeah, that balloon would need to be several times larger than the moon then. I do wonder how big of a balloon we would need to stop global warming. Interesting!