It’s true: Throughout the early 90s, a team of Russian astronomers and engineers were hellbent on literally turning night into day. By shining a giant mirror onto the earth from space, they figured they could bring sunlight to the depths of night, extending the workday, cutting back on lighting costs and allowing laborers to toil longer. If this sounds a bit like the plot of a Bond film, well, it’s that too.

The difference is that for a second there, the scientists, led by Vladimir Sergeevich Syromyatnikov, one of the most important astronautical engineers in history, actually pulled it off.

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“The initial impetus for the project was to provide illumination for industrial and natural resource exploitation in remote geographical areas with long polar nights in Siberia and western Russia, allowing outdoor work to proceed round the clock,” Jonathan Crary, a professor of art and theory at Columbia University, writes in his book about the rise of the round-the-clock labor paradigm, 24/7. “But the company subsequently expanded its plans to include the possibility of supplying nighttime lighting for entire metropolitan areas. Reasoning that it could reduce energy costs for electric lighting, the company’s slogan pitched its services as ‘daylight all night long.'”

"Think what it will mean for the future of mankind," Syromyadnikov would later tell the Moscow Times. "No more electricity bills, no more long, dark winters. This is a serious breakthrough for technology."