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"I went back to science fiction to try a few experiments …and my first experiment was a disaster…"
- Alfred Bester

Fusion Sunlight Tube  
  Central light source for a spun cylinder space station.  

Five miles overhead was the fusion sunlight tube, running down the radius of the slightly bulging cylinder that was Farmer's Asteroid. Five miles above the sunlight tube, the sky was a patchwork of small squares, split by a central wedding ring of lake and by tributary rivers...
Technovelgy from At the Bottom of a Hole, by Larry Niven.
Published by Galaxy Magazine in 1966
Additional resources -

Compare to the reflected artificial sun from Revolt on Inferno (1931) by Victor Rousseau, the orbital mirror from Completely Automatic (1941) by Theodore Sturgeon and the Lado-Acheson system from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from At the Bottom of a Hole
  More Ideas and Technology by Larry Niven
  Tech news articles related to At the Bottom of a Hole
  Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven

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Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space

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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'

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'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'

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Preventing annoying space debris build-up.

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'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'

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'The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button.'

Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'

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