The bad news for the Idli-Maker Space Mirror Death Laser Program and the good news for 8 billion people who won’t get fried like ants beneath a psychopathic kid’s magnifying glass, is that we have an atmosphere that scatters light like crazy. We have Rayleigh scattering and the even stronger Mie scattering effects protecting us from the sun.

If you wanted to make a space death beam that penetrates the atmosphere, you can’t use visible light. You need a specific type of laser called a maser that shoots microwaves.