# Orbital sunshade over the poles

Blocking sunlight to an area 5-7 million sq miles, in a shape of a pie, with the center 100,000 sq miles left out. We have the technology to make a fabric of nano-tubes for strength, reflective or solar capability. It could be built on octagonal or triangular frames. Built with mini pulse engines to be used for directional correctness

If this is achievable we could effectively drop the polar temperature to the polar region of 5-7 million sq miles, in doing so force a freeze of sea ice. Keep it shaded for several years. If it were a gigantic solar collector it could be highly profitable.

I understand we can not have a satellite or object directly over the pole in a stationary orbit. Because it needs to be traveling at roughly 500 Km a second so gravity does not drag it down. But, could it be set into a much higher orbit that does not require forward momentum to stay in orbit?

Seems much more effective than placing millions of solar pumps on the ice-sheets drilling holes into the water underneath and pumping that water onto the glaciers. I see many issues with this plan, not to mention its a huge expense, and once you Swiss-cheese the glacier, I see many more melting issues, not to mention construction rigs, men housing, traffic on the glacier. Seems to me it is a pipe dream with vastly dangerous effects to the pole's environment.

• There is already a good answer here, but for clarification.... you are trying to lower the temperature at the poles? Solar radiation would be one component, but have you thought about convection that would continue to bring warm air to the poles? – scm May 15 '17 at 3:19

The only way to have an object remain within a line between the Earth and the Sun is to put it at the L$_1$ Lagrange point; this point is nominally unstable but you can have halo orbits around it which require fuel for station-keeping but at reasonable amounts. If you really wanted to mess with the Earth's climate in the way you have described, this option at least has orbital dynamics that pass the KSP test.