Except if the reflectors are shaped for wide area illumination, then their focal distance is probably nowhere near the distance from the satellites to the earth’s surface. So I don’t think is any “single point” to be had.

Heck, I haven’t done the math or anything but I bet even if you did instead use parabolic reflectors that were tuned to focus at the earth’s surface, it would still be very difficult to keep them aimed at a specific point for long enough to achieve significant heating. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s difficult to achieve an increase in heating that’s close to, say, the heating difference from standing outside at noon as opposed to 5PM. Which then doesn’t do much because you couldn’t effectively use a reflector at noon, anyway. You’d want a lens instead. Or some sort of complicated Newtonian telescope type contraption.

▲

geetee 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think these things start out looking like a weapons. Wrong reflector shape? It could just be proving out other aspects. It could also be completely innocent too, but I don't think this is quite conspiracy level thinking.

	▲	blooalien 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> It could just be proving out other aspects. It could also be completely innocent too, but I don't think this is quite conspiracy level thinking. This honestly strikes me as an innocent test of one random idea/technology. The whole "conspiracy level" thing (if it were to ever happen at all) would come later on, and most likely from entirely different people usin' the things discovered from experiments like this one in wholly unacceptable ways because they simply have too much power, money, and time, and not nearly enough good sense between their ears. Sad though that as other folk have pointed out, if the technology were to work as expected, then it could also be used to help mitigate global warming by reflecting a specific amount of sunlight away from Earth, too. The sad part is that's likely not what such experiments will lead to initially. The "bad people" tend to be pretty quick to try to weaponize or monetize (or both) anything they take an interest in.