A Radical Bet On Sunlight

Ben Nowack, co-founder and CEO of Reflect Orbital, credits much of his interest in engineering to his father, a carpenter, who had a workshop full of tools and invited his tinkering son into the DIY world at an early age. They’d make wooden toys together and his father would patiently teach him different skills and techniques for building things.

Nowack’s curiosity and passion for engineering has taken him on a career journey that has included working on the Dragon spacecraft at SpaceX and helping to build autonomous drones at Zipline.

This immersion in diverse engineering problems helped build the skills behind his latest idea.

The idea for Reflect Orbital was inspired one late night in 2021. Nowack was watching a YouTube video about a company building a solar farm in Africa with the aim to deliver its energy to Europe as a low-cost alternative. He was struck by the novelty of moving solar energy from a superior collection region in terms of both light intensity and cost and then providing that energy to areas with high demand.

The concept intrigued him and he started wondering whether there could be other ways to achieve the same result without having to build significant infrastructure and long-distance power lines.

Drawing on his experience, he quickly ran the numbers on what it would cost to build and launch mirrors into space that would redirect light to existing solar panels on Earth. With launch costs falling and advances in materials and related technologies, his figurative napkin calculations suggested the viability of a really big idea.

Nowack had been looking for an audacious problem to solve and now he’d hit the jackpot. He’d build a company to harness and distribute clean solar energy in a completely new way.

The Idea That Technology Finally Caught Up With

Curious why nobody had already pursued this idea in the past, Nowack did find plenty of research on the topic from organizations such as NASA, the European Space Agency, and the University of Glasgow, including some attempts to design and build similar efforts.

For a wide range of reasons including the historically high costs of launching satellites, the idea of beaming sunlight from space had largely remained an academic exercise.

Nowack considered collaborating with others but ultimately settled on creating something himself. Rather than being slowed down by partners, he believed it would be faster to raise the necessary capital and build his own company.

In fact, Nowack’s philosophy on being able to succeed in building complex ideas has a lot to do with speed. He believes that moving too slowly can make ambitious ideas impossible. Fast action, even with high risk, is better than slow action, or no action at all. His approach is to move quickly and act decisively. That’s enlightening wisdom in a world where technology is often no longer a constraint.

Execution At Startup Velocity

Speed from idea to action isn’t just some exaggerated idea at Reflect Orbital. The small team that’s grown from 16 last year to 60 this year is building reflectors (similar to solar sails) every three days now, an effort that used to take others around six months.

Even more impressive, the first satellite has already been built and is scheduled to be launched this year with a second and third close behind.

After their satellites are launched and deployed to space, the team anticipates it will take only around two weeks to prepare them to be operational.

As challenges and issues are addressed from the first few launches, the company has plans for a massive deployment of a constellation of mirrors in space. It anticipates operating as many as fifty thousand by 2035. This will enable a wide variety of applications and plenty of capacity to meet what they expect will be significant demand.

The Business Model: Power And Light

Nowack’s core vision is for the company to be an energy provider. With the energy industry competing to deliver the lowest cost per kilowatt-hour, he believes that their mix of clean energy delivered at low cost will make Reflect Orbital a serious player in providing power to the planet.

While the energy play is sizable itself and they could simply focus on that industry, there are a vast number of uses as a lighting business too.

Nowack’s mirrors will have the ability to shine light on areas of 6000 acres. This light will be controllable in terms of intensity, ranging from a slight illumination to the equivalent of moonlight. Eventually, he believes, full daylight will be possible.

Uses could include providing light on demand for construction sites, city areas such as sports stadiums and historical sites, disaster zones, and farms. With the potential for 24-hours of sunlight, plant yield production could be significantly expanded.

When the company publicly solicited interest in sunlight on demand, they received thousands of requests and ideas from people all over the world.

Between delivering energy and selling sunlight, Nowack believes he’s building a multi-billion-dollar business.

A Powerful Idea, With Real Questions

While the business opportunities are compelling, there are plenty of critics and opponents such as Darksky International who fear the consequences of thousands of mirrors shining light down on Earth.

Many who take issue with this idea maintain that the solution will, for example, be used for military purposes or will create unnecessary light pollution, while others worry about the impact on humans, animals and plants. The company is aware of these concerns and has made precise control of the light as well as safeguards and rules for use a priority.

Demanding light won’t be something anyone can do from a smartphone app. Nowack jokes that this isn’t a solution for illuminating the sidewalk as you walk a dog at night. The target customers for Reflect Orbital will be large enterprises, and each request will be carefully managed to protect the environment and to reduce concerns.

History shows that new, big ideas almost always experience resistance and concerns at first. If Nowack and the team at Reflect Orbital can deliver all the benefits they propose and the results turn out to be largely positive, they will achieve something extraordinary.

Today, more than ever, leaders have the tools to pursue audacious ideas. Whether Reflect Orbital ultimately succeeds remains to be seen, but the signal is clear: the future belongs to those willing to move fast, take risks, and build what once seemed impossible.