alt Hacker News> The mirror fleet does not increase the total power available to the project; Mercury still intercepts only a fixed amount of sunlight.
I think I must be missing something important, because this doesn't make sense to me. If you put your mirrors in orbits where they don't block the dayside surface (sun-synchronous?), then they increase the total surface area receiving solar radiation.
Yeah, orbital mirrors essentially expand the radius of Mercury, increasing the sunlight available. Terrestrial mirrors would ensure that light makes it from the sunward side to the dark side of the planet.