Some presidents are known as uplifting orators; our present president is known for petulant putdowns.

Periodically, Trump discovers a new pejorative that he considers clever, so he wears it out attacking his endless list of enemies. His current favorite is “lunatic,” hurling the slur at women reporters, most foreign leaders, all Democrats, protestors, and… well, everyone who offends him.

But if he wants some real lunatics to belittle, why not that menagerie he’s appointed to top government positions? Such as Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC attack dog who keeps yapping that he’s gonna abolish NPR.

Failing at that, Carr has now gone from silly to ridiculous, pushing a phantasmagoric scheme that truly is lunacy. It comes from some Elon Musk protégés who apparently noticed that our planet gets dark as night falls. Eureka, they exclaimed, we need to “light the night!”

Why? Well, they say, to illuminate all city streets and rural roads, make crops grow faster, and stuff like that. But how to generate the light? Easy, the geniuses explain: Mirrors.

They want government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that could reflect sunlight onto Earth’s rotating dark areas. Lots of mirrors – the schemers propose to put 50,000 in our skies by 2030, with each of the largest ones shining as bright as 100 full moons!

Nothing could go wrong with that, right? Bedazzled, Carr didn’t ask. Instead, with no public input, he just rubber-stamped an initial launch of this “novel technology,” blandly assuring us that “harms are unlikely to occur.”

To oppose this lunacy, connect with the American Astronomical Society: aas.org.

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