--- title: "Former SpaceX Guy Aims to Launch Giant Mirrors Into Orbit to Shine on Solar Panels at Night" description: "Ben Nowack, a 26-year-old inventor, wants to send satellites with mirrors mounted to their backs into space to allow us to generate solar energy at night." date: "2022-09-14" modified: "2022-09-14" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-mirrors-orbit-solar-panels" categories: - "Energy" - "Renewable Energy" - "Science & Energy" - "Solar Power" - "Space" - "SpaceX" tags: - "solar energy" - "solar power" - "the digest" --- # Former SpaceX Guy Aims to Launch Giant Mirrors Into Orbit to Shine on Solar Panels at Night ![Ben Nowack, a 26-year-old inventor, wants to send satellites with mirrors mounted to their backs into space to allow us to generate solar energy at night.]() *\Image: Getty Images\* ## Night Light Ben Nowack, a 26-year-old inventor and former SpaceX employee, wants to send satellites with mirrors mounted on them into orbit to allow us to generate solar energy at night, [*Vice* reports](). "Everybody's installing so many solar panels everywhere," Nowack told the site. "It’s really a great candidate to power humanity." "But sunlight turns off, it's called nighttime," he added. "If you solve that fundamental problem, you fix solar everywhere." ## Beaming Solar Nowack founded Tons of Mirrors, an aptly named venture trying to get orbit-based reflector satellites off the ground. The big advantage of having the reflectors in space means that "you can shine sunlight on solar farms that already exist," Nowack told *Vice*. "Then I developed several more technologies which I know for a fact no one else is working on. That made the model even more economical." His concept for a reflector in orbit takes the basic technologies NASA's James Webb Space Telescope uses, he told the site, and turns them "the other way." But instead of relying on one massive and unwieldy mirror, Nowack proposes building a parabola-shaped reflector out of "several million parabolas." ## Raising Funds The entrepreneur is now trying to raise $5 million by October to test out one of the company's reflectors outside the International Space Station. It's certainly a long shot, but it's a compelling concept, at least in theory. Besides, if there's one thing we've learned from his former boss Elon Musk, it's that proving that something can be done more economically can be worth an astronomical amount of money. "Making this cheaper than everything else, that’s the challenge," Nowack told *Vice*. **READ MORE:** [This Man Is Trying to Put Mirrors in Space to Generate Solar Power at Night]() \[*Vice*\] **More on solar power:** *[Amazon Secretly Shut Down All Its Solar Rooftops After They Started Catching Fire]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()