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> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of th
by gok 9mo ago
> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power
We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.
edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun's power. A few trillionths per year.
- padjo 9mo agoPfft that would just require setting up an entire lunar mineral extraction and refining system larger than we have on earth, just minor details.
- moeadham 9mo agoIn fairness, solar cells can be about 5x more efficient in space (irradiance, uptime).
- __alexs 9mo agoSolar cells have exactly the same power rating on earth as in space surely? What would change is their capacity factor and so energy generation.
- bastawhiz 9mo agoThe atmosphere is in the way, and they get pretty dirty on earth. Also it doesn't rain or get cloudy in space
- __alexs 9mo agoSure but like, just use even more solar panels? You can probably buy a lot of them for the cost of a satellite.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- rcxdude 9mo agoThe cost of putting them up there is a lot more than the cost of the cells
- schiffern 9mo ago>just use even more solar panels I think it's because at this scale a significant limit becomes the global production capacity for solar cells, and SpaceX is in the business of cheaper satellites and launch.
- skywhopper 9mo ago“This scale” is not realistic in terms of demand or even capability. We may as well talk about mining Sagittarius A* for neutrons.
- schiffern 9mo agoYou don't even need a particularly large scale, it's efficient resource utilization. Humanity has a finite (and too small) capacity for building solar panels. AI requires lots of power already. So the question is, do you want AI to consume X (where X is a pretty big chunk of the pie), or five times X, from that total supply? Using less PV is great, but only if the total cost ends up cheaper than installing 5X the capacity as terrestrial PV farms, along with daily smoothing batteries. SpaceX is only skating to where they predict the cost puck will be.
- DennisP 9mo agoAnd in geostationary, the planet hardly ever gets in the way. They get full sun 99.5% of the year.
- XorNot 9mo agoBoosting to geostationary orbit knocks a big chunk out of your payload capacity. Falcon 9 expendable will do 22 tons to LEO and about 8 tons to GTO.
- DennisP 9mo agoThat's still a smaller ratio than the ~4X gain in irradiance over LEO. But if you're doing it at scale you could use orbital tugs with ion drives or something, and use much less fuel per transfer. It's probably not competitive at all without having fully reusable launch rockets, so the cost to LEO is a lot lower.
- XorNot 9mo ago8 tons over 22 is a little over 1/3rd the original payload to LEO. If 4x the solar generation potential (not irradiance - the sun is not 4x brighter in space at Earth's orbital radius) is the reward, that's putting an incredible premium on a 3x multiplier on launch costs per kg (at minimum - likely higher, you're also inheriting a worse radiation environment). But those two parameters are not equals: 3x the cost per kg is a much higher number then 4x the solar power.
- DennisP 9mo agoMy response is already contained in my comment above, in the sentences after the first.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- fuzzfactor 9mo agoI'm all for efficiency, but I would think a hailstorm of space junk hits a lot harder than one of ice out on the farm. Except it doesn't melt like regular hail so when further storms come up you could end being hit by the same hail more than once :\
- PunchyHamster 9mo agoeven at 10% (say putting it on some northen pile of snow) it is still cheaper to put it on earth than launch it
- bastawhiz 9mo agoI don't disagree
- DoctorOetker 9mo agowould you prefer big tech to piss their waste heat into your rivers, soils and atmosphere? or would you prefer them to go to the bathroom upstairs? at some point big tech is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation...
- mrguyorama 9mo agoHere in Maine in the depths of winter (late December), 1 m^2 of ground can collect 4 kwh per day (weird units). That's why people are trying to build solar here. Our power is expensive due partially to failing to build basically any new generation, and some land is very cheap, and the operational cost of a solar farm is minuscule. Solar farming is basically an idle game in real life and my addiction is making me itchy. You can overprovision, and you should with how stupidly cheap solar is. That we aren't spending billions of Federal dollars building solar anywhere we can, as much as we can, is pathetic and stupid and a national tragedy. We got so excited about dam building that there's no where to build useful dams anymore, and there is significant value to be gained by removing those dams, yet somehow we aren't deploying as much solar as we possibly can? It's a national security issue. China knows this, and is building appropriately. The southwest should be generating so much solar power that we sequester carbon from the atmosphere simply because there is nothing else left to do with the power.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- kortex 9mo agoSatellites can adjust attitude so that the panels are always normal to the incident rays for maximum energy capture. And no weather/dust. You also don't usually use the same exact kind of panels as terrestrial solar farms. Since you are going to space, you spend the extra money to get the highest possible efficiency in terms of W/kg. Terrestrial usually optimizes for W/$ nameplate capacity LCOE, which also includes installation and other costs.
- tasty_freeze 9mo agoFor one or a few-off expensive satellites that are intended to last 10-20 years, then yes. But in this case the satellites will be more disposable and the game plan is to launch tons of them at the lowest cost per satellite and let the sheer numbers take care of reliability concerns. It is similar to the biological tradeoff of having a few offspring and investing heavily in their safety and growth vs having thousands off offspring and investing nothing in their safety and growth.
- Waterluvian 9mo agoAtmospheric derating brings insolation from about 1.367KW/m2 to about 1.0. And then there’s that pesky night time and those annoying seasons. It’s still not even remotely reasonable, but it’s definitely much higher in space.
- shagie 9mo ago> And then there’s that pesky night time and those annoying seasons. The two options there are cluttering up the dawn dusk polar orbit more or going to high earth orbit so that you stay out of the shadow of the earth... and geostationary orbits are also in rather high demand.
- Waterluvian 9mo agoPut them super super far away and focus all the energy into one very narrow death laser that we trust the tech company to be careful with.
- crabmusket 9mo agoSolar modules you can buy for your house usually have quoted power ratings at "max STC" or Standard Testing Conditions, which are based on insolation on Earth's surface. https://wiki.pvmet.org/index.php?title=Standard_Test_Conditions_(STC) https://wiki.pvmet.org/index.php?title=Standard_Test_Conditi... So, a "400W panel" is rated to produce 400W at standard testing conditions. I'm not sure how relevant that is to the numbers being thrown around in this thread, but thought I'd provide context.
- __alexs 9mo agoThat's super interesting. STC uses an irradiance of irradiance 1000W/m2, in space it seems like you get closer to 1400W/m2. That's definitely better, but also not enormously better. Seems also like they are rated at 25C, I am certainly not a space engineer but that seems kind of temperate for space where cooling is more of a challenge. Seems like it might balance out to more like 1.1x to 1.3x more power in space?
- bastawhiz 9mo agoAnd how much of that power would be spent on high speed communications with Earth that aren't, you know, a megabit or two per second
- chaos_emergent 9mo agoI grew up on a rural farm in California with a dial-up connection that significantly hampered my ability to participate in the internet as a teenager. I got Starlink installed at my parents' house about five years ago, and it's resulted in me being able to spend considerably more time at home. Even with their cheapest home plan, we're getting like 100 Mbps down and maybe 20 to 50 up. So it's just not true at all that you would have connections that are a megabit or two per second.
- bastawhiz 9mo agoThat's not what I'm suggesting. The post says "deep space". If you're going to try to harvest even a tiny percentage of the sun's energy, you're not doing that in Earth's orbit. The comparison is a webcam feed from Mars.
- crote 9mo agoThat's pretty much a solved problem. We've had geostationary constellations for TV broadcast at hundreds of megabytes for decades now, and lasers for sat-to-sat comms seems to be making decent progress as well.
- bastawhiz 9mo ago> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power Which satellites are operating from "deep space"?
- _n66o 9mo agoThose are for video. AI Chat workflows use a fraction of the data.
- cowsandmilk 9mo agoIt is more than 5x less expensive to get surface area on earth’s surface.
- bob1029 9mo agoRight now it is. However, the amount of available land is fixed and the demand for its use is growing. Solar isn't the only buyer in this real estate market.
- JeremyNT 9mo agoWe have so much excess land with no real use for it that our government actually pays farmers to grow corn on it to burn in cars. Availability of land for solar production isn't remotely a real problem in the near term.
- moralestapia 9mo agoThis. I feel like everyone just lost their mind.
- doctorwho42 9mo agoYou just have to remember, most of these people live in high density regions and have little comprehension about how much surface area humanity truly occupies... And that isn't even accounting for offshore constructs.
- rainsford 9mo agoThe Technology Connections Youtube channel recently did a great video arguing pretty convincingly that the land used to grow corn for cars would be vastly more efficiently used from an energy perspective if we covered it with solar panels.
- recursivecaveat 9mo agoThis is really underselling it tbh. Any land that's growing corn in a developed country is likely top 1% of land on earth. Half of the earth is desert and tundra. Which is still incredibly easier to work with than space because you can ship there with a pickup very cheaply. Maybe when nevada and central australia are wall-to-wall solar panels we can check back on space.
- ben_w 9mo agoThe quoted "1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally" is the peak output, not the average output. They're only about 20% higher peak output in space… well, if you can keep them cool at least.
- pantalaimon 9mo agoBut there are no clouds in space and with the right orbit they are always facing the sun
- jrk 9mo agoThe 1TW is the rated peak power output. It's essentially the same in space. The thing that changes is the average fraction of this sustained over time (due to day/night/seasons/atmosphere, or the lack of all of the above). It's still the same 1TW theoretical peak in space, it's just that you can actually use close to that full capacity all the time, whereas on earth you'd need to over-provision substantially and add storage, so 1TW of panels can only drive perhaps a few hundred GW of average load.
- singleshot_ 9mo ago> the whole capacity Wouldn’t something like half of the panels be in shadow at any time?
- ben_w 9mo agoDepends where you put them. The current vogue option is a sun-synchronous orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit
- WalterBright 9mo agopolar orbit
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- philistine 9mo agoDoes that include all the required radiators to vent heat?
- chartisma 9mo agoand of course, the continuous opposite boost needed to prevent the heat vent from knocking them out of orbit.
- virgildotcodes 9mo agoI think this is all ridiculous, to be clear, but re: this problem couldn't the radiators in theory be oriented so that they vent in opposite directions and cancel out any thrust that would be generated?
- tenuousemphasis 9mo agoNow do waste heat.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- DoctorOetker 9mo agoHere you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862869
- sltkr 9mo agoFortunately there are no downsides to launching solar cells into space that would offset those gains.
- jupp0r 9mo agoSee Dyson Sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
- moralestapia 9mo agoYeah, that's the point ... it's stupid to believe humanity is capable of deploying that much infrastructure. We cannot do even 0.01% of it.
- entropie 9mo agoBut the factory ~~can~~must grow.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tlb 9mo agoWhat do you think the limiting factor is? I don't see why we can't scale manufacturing of satellites up as far as we want. If we mine out a substantial fraction of the mass of the earth, we can go harvest asteroids or something.
- skywhopper 9mo agoThe physical amount of material in the solar system is a pretty big limiting factor.
- willturman 9mo agoYeah, but besides not having the physical amount of material available in the solar system, or the availability of any technology to transfer power generated to a destination where it can serve a meaningful purpose in the foreseeable future, or having the political climate or capital necessary for even initiating such an effort, or not being able to do so without severely kneecapping the habitability of our planet, there are aren't really any meaningful barriers that I can see.
- dgxyz 9mo ago[flagged]
- thethimble 9mo ago> And not delivering products 2024 revenue of >$100b is quite impressive for not delivering any products
- dgxyz 9mo agoI should say delivering promised products. Anyway they just canned the S and X lines so that's done as well...
- zemvpferreira 9mo agoYou know what they mean. Full self-driving was promised what, 10 years ago? Tesla Roadster? Sub-25K car? etc etc etc
- asadotzler 9mo agoWhat kind of nonsense is that. SpaceX 2024 revenue barely broke $10B, if that. Launch was probably ~$4B and Starlink probably ~$5B. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and double those just for shits and giggles and that's still less than $20B and you're claiming >$100B? Horse shit. Nonsense.
- iknowstuff 9mo agoTesla
- delabay 9mo ago[flagged]
- dgxyz 9mo agoWhat is tiring is people defending it. Everyone goes down with this ship...
- 9mo ago
- fooker 9mo ago> We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. China made 1.8 TW of solar cells in 2025. The raw materials required to make these are incredibly abundant, we make as much as we need.
- momoschili 9mo agoyou realize the factor of 2 you introduce doesn't meaningfully change the order of magnitude that the previous poster is implying right?
- fooker 9mo agoYou missed the point. We can make ten or hundred times the number of solar cells we make right now, we just don't have a reason to. The technology is fairly ancient unless you want to compete on efficiency, and the raw materials abundant.
- schiffern 9mo ago>We can make ten or hundred times the number of solar cells we make right now Tomorrow? The limit isn't just about the current capacity or the maximum theoretical capacity, it's also about the maximum speed you can ramp.
- fooker 9mo ago>Tomorrow? Eventually :) Markets are forward looking, and not really bound to 'tomorrow'.
- schiffern 9mo agoDo we really need to say (on HN especially) that time-to-market does matter? Not just for startups either. If you ramp up the Polio vaccine in 1 year vs 10 years, that has a big impact on human wellbeing. The two scenarios are not equivalent outcomes, even though it still happens "eventually." Speed matters.
- spikels 9mo agoContext missing. This is in reference to a vision the (distant?) future where the satellites are manufactured in factories on the Moon and sent into space with mass drivers. Full paragraph quote comes from: > While launching AI satellites from Earth is the immediate focus, Starship’s capabilities will also enable operations on other worlds. Thanks to advancements like in-space propellant transfer, Starship will be capable of landing massive amounts of cargo on the Moon. Once there, it will be possible to establish a permanent presence for scientific and manufacturing pursuits. Factories on the Moon can take advantage of lunar resources to manufacture satellites and deploy them further into space. By using an electromagnetic mass driver and lunar manufacturing, it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power. >
- titzer 9mo ago> This is in reference to a vision the (distant?) future where the satellites are manufactured in factories on the Moon and sent into space with mass drivers. In the meantime, how about affordable insulin for everybody?
- eamag 9mo agoIsn't it already somewhat affordable? https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-i... It's a political problem, not a tech problem
- Cthulhu_ 9mo agoExactly; most of the world's problems are political problems. Which Musk has no intention to fix, of course, because he's more about money and (buying) status with it. He had an opportunity but decided to aid the regime in extracting people's data instead (probably selling it to adversaries).
- fluoridation 9mo agoWhy would satellites be manufactured on the moon? There's nothing on the moon. The raw materials would have to be ferried over first. What would be the point?
- gradus_ad 9mo agoHelp me understand something. We make 1 TW of cells per year but we're struggling with bringing 1 GW consuming data centers online?
- jaggederest 9mo agoNameplate capacity needs a derate for availability, so you can drop it down to about 200GW(e) equivalent continuous power assuming we're making and deploying enough batteries to support it. More, obviously, if those panels are going to an equatorial desert, less if they're going to sunny Svalbard in the winter time.
- rainsford 9mo agoWe also shouldn't overlook the fact that the proposal entirely glosses over the implication of the alternative benefits we might realize if humanity achieved the incredible engineering and technical capacity necessary to make this version of space AI happen. Think about it. Elon conjures up a vision of the future where we've managed to increase our solar cell manufacturing capacity by two whole orders of magnitude and have the space launch capability for all of it along with tons and tons of other stuff and the best he comes up with is...GPUs in orbit? This is essentially the superhero gadget technology problem, where comic books and movies gloss over the the civilization changing implications of some technology the hero invents to punch bad guys harder. Don't get me wrong, the idea of orbiting data centers is kind of cool if we can pull it off. But being able to pull if off implies an ability to do a lot more interesting things. The problem is that this is both wildly overambitious and somehow incredibly myopic at the same time.
- byearthithatius 9mo agoSo what are the other things? You said he glossed over them and didn't mention a single one.
- aorloff 9mo agoReliably and efficiently transport energy generated in space back to earth, for starters Or let me guess, its going to be profitable to mine crypto in space (thereby solving the problem of transporting the "work" back to earth)
- mkull 9mo agoWhy would you transfer the energy to earth? The energy powers ai compute = $
- Sparyjerry 9mo agoDead on, You can transmit data to and from space and have the compute completed at potentially fractions of the cost.
- titzer 9mo agoI couldn't believe that was an actual quote from the article. It is. These people are legit insane.
- drdaeman 9mo agoNot insane at all. They are perfectly sane and know words can be twisted to justify just about anything, when stating the actual goals is unsavory.
- nprateem 9mo agoNo it's just Musk's Big Idea for spacex to hype it before IPO. It's their version of FSD, robots etc. You've got to hand it to him, he is a bullshitter par excellence.
- thfuran 9mo agoHow people still believe his bullshit is unfathomable.
- zpeti 9mo agoYeah, I remember people saying that about making 1m model 3s per year, landing rockets, getting 10k+ satellite privately into orbit, and getting millions of subscribers using internet via those satellites. Maybe just maybe the guy does actually get things done, and if you didn't hate him you'd see that? (yes, there are some things he hasn't gotten done. That doesn't take away from what he has gotten done)
- emptyfile 9mo ago[dead]
- taurath 9mo agoPlease understand that his companies succeeding in some things doesn’t make the things that are exaggerated, overpromised, or just plain naked hype with no backing somehow practical. It’s an interesting effect of our age that for some figures to some people if any criticism is considered unwarranted then all criticism must be disregarded. It reminds me of growing up in the evangelical church and all the pastors who’d still keep their followers even after they show up in new cars or fly first class, taking the tithes from old ladies on their pension.
- papercrane 9mo agoIs there a credible way to cool a space-based data center on that scale?
- KeplerBoy 9mo agoThere's not even a credible way to transfer meaningful amounts of data to and from a deep-space based data center. What good is compute if you can't interface with it? This is where we are now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Optical_Communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Optical_Communicati... SpaceX may be leading in short-range (few hundred km) space-to-space data transfer but there is a long way to go for terabit/s deep-space links.
- lugao 9mo agoOnly people who never interacted with data center reliability think it's doable to maintain servers with no human intervention.
- angled 9mo agoBut … but what if we had solar-powered AI SREs to fix the solar-powered AI satellites… /in space/?
- lugao 9mo agoMaintaining modern accelerators requires frequent hands-on intervention -- replacing hardware, reseating chips, and checking cable integrity. Because these platforms are experimental and rapidly evolving, they aren't 'space-ready.' Space-grade hardware must be 'rad-hardened' and proven over years of testing. By the time an accelerator is reliable enough for orbit, it’s several generations obsolete, making it nearly impossible to compete or turn a profit against ground-based clusters.
- trothamel 9mo agoOn the other hand, Tesla vehicles have similar hardware built into them, and don't require such hands-on intervention. (And that's the hardware that will be going up.)
- lugao 9mo agoCar-grade inference hardware is fundamentally different from data center-grade inference hardware, let alone the specialized, interconnected hardware used for training (like NVLink or complex optical fabrics). These are different beasts in terms of power density, thermal stress, and signaling sensitivity. Beyond that, we don't actually know the failure rate of the Tesla fleet. I’ve never had a personal computer fail from use in my life, but that’s just anecdotal and holds no weight against the law of large numbers. When you operate at the scale of a massive cluster, "one-in-a-million" failures become a daily statistical certainty. Claiming that because you don't personally see cars failing on the side of the road means they require zero intervention actually proves my original point: people who haven't managed data center reliability underestimate the sheer volume of "rare" failures that occur at scale.
- mr_toad 9mo ago> We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. Doubling every three years; at that rate it would take about 30 years for 1TW to become 1000TW. Whether on not the trend continues largely depends on demand, but as of right now humanity seems to have an insatiable demand for power.
- sarchertech 9mo agoI think it largely depends on what bottlenecks exist that we haven’t hit yet.
- Analemma_ 9mo agoWe’re not going to use 100% of our solar panel manufacturing capacity to power space data centers, specifically because everyone else on the ground is so power-hungry. If we’re being generous, it could maybe top out at 1%, which adds another ~20 years to your timeline for a total of 50. I think it’s safe to say this part is bunk (along with everything else about this plan which is also bunk).
- mlindner 9mo agoWe seem to be using 100% of our DRAM manufacturing for AI. So it's not completely out of the question.
- usrusr 9mo agoSpace to put them, terrestrially, is not infinite. Demand has a hard ceiling.
- DoctorOetker 9mo agounless demand comes from space
- FeepingCreature 9mo agoThat's a supply ceiling. Funnily, it's also one that's solved by putting them in space.
- coliveira 9mo agoThis is all based on bad math. The people proposing these things don't even have proper scientific and mathematical training to determine what is achievable.
- mrguyorama 9mo agoThey never did any math at all. They knew their supporters would burn thousands of hours and bend over backwards doing dishonest math for them and provide cover for what is a looting operation.
- storus 9mo agoDoesn't this risk some unforeseen effects on Earth or the rest of the solar system at that scale? Disruption of magnetic shield, some not yet known law of physics suddenly getting felt etc.?
- breakyerself 9mo agoIt's not really going to happen so we don't have to worry about that.
- moomoo11 9mo agoWe will have cyber taxis and FSD 100% next year.
- reissbaker 9mo agoPhotovoltaic production has been doubling every year. That's not a huge amount of doubling!
- somenameforme 9mo agoYou're not considering some important multipliers. In space you're already getting a substantial immediate boost due to greater solar irradiance - no atmosphere or anything getting in the way of those juicy photons. You can also get 24 hour coverage in space. And finally they mention "deep space" - it's unclear what that means but solar irradiance increases on an inverse square law - get half way to the sun and you're getting another 4x boost in power. I'm sure there's other factors I'm not considering as well - space and solar just go quite well together.
- aeternum 9mo agoEarth does have plenty of sand and iron. Literally all you have to do is grow the sand into a crystal, slice it up, etch some patterns onto it, then add some metal. Making only 1TW of pv cells per year is a skill issue.
- Faaak 9mo agoSure, and copper, and aluminium
- dtj1123 9mo agoWhilst I agree that this glosses over a huge number of technical obstacles, space based solar power could scale more easily than that on earth. Lack of variable weather and gravity means rather than using photovoltaic cells, you can just set up paper thin huge mirrors to focus light and generate steam. Caveat: my understanding of this largely comes from the book The High Frontier, which is really old and probably inaccurate. I can't think of a reason why this particular point would be wrong though.
- danny_codes 9mo agoThis idea is physically possible. So is a Dyson sphere. I’m surprised Elon didn’t suggest that too.
- dtj1123 9mo agoAt the current rate I guess we can expect him to propose this around 2030.
- mrguyorama 9mo ago>space based solar power could scale more easily than that on earth. Actually provide an argument instead of just asserting this. On earth, deployment of a built solar panel is screwing it into a dirt cheap frame on the ground. To deploy a solar panel in space, you must attach it to a satellite that no one involved has even pretended to claim is designed, so you need a factory for those on the same order of magnitude as your panels, you need enough boost capacity, so a factory for rockets, and a much larger fuel industry, and then you need all the immense engineering required to do any of that at all, and then you need to spin up the industries to supply this brand new industry, and then you need to manage all those satellites in space, and then you still don't get any actual power because it's all in space so you haven't scaled SHIT It's all absolute horseshit. No, none of this is planned. He's just going to cash in on the IPO.
- dtj1123 9mo agoI think what's happened here is that you've interpreted my passing comment about something I find interesting to mean that I don't think this is a ploy to pocket vast sums of cash, and written a takedown for an argument that I'm not making.
- boudin 9mo agoI wonder what the plan is to recycle those. Without a plan to safely bring back all this hardware and recycling it, we'll deplete earth from it's mineral. The matter used to build things on earth stays within earth's ecosystem. Moving matter out continusously at industrial scale with no plan to bring 100% of it back in the ecosystem other than burning it seems quite unsustainable and irresponsable.
- wasmainiac 9mo agoNot to mention… how do you repair it when components fail, especially sensitive electronics against cosmic radiation
- Den_VR 9mo agoWhat concerns me are the implications if the Dark Forest Theory is correct.
- krkdndnkenen 9mo agoYou also have all that heat to dissipate....
- raverbashing 9mo agoYeah I don't know where this delusion of "Servers in space" came from, I think of it as the new NFTs But I bet those pushing for it are very interested in feeding the grift
- jalapenos 9mo agoSounds badass
- ryandvm 9mo agoHe just says shit that sounds smart and then rides the vibes to financial success, but it's not working anymore. 10 years ago when Tesla actually revolutionized the retail EV industry everyone took his word for it. Then after a few failed prognostications the nerds started to doubt his credibility, a few more years of this and the tech press started to see through it, and now he's reduced to only the MAGA-faithful falling for his Phony Stark act. The ground is coming up fast.
- NewLogic 9mo agoHas anyone done the math on how much liquid methane and oxygen this would take to launch on Starship? Seems like an impossibility alone without digging into the numbers.
- chanux 9mo agoOk. And number will go up.
- alextingle 9mo agoI've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Cooling systems fail in geostationary orbit. I watched thermal loads glitter in the dark near Lagrange Point 2. RAID arrays degraded by Van Allen radiation. Micrometeorite impacts at 2 AM. Legacy Perl scripts no one dared to touch, running on hardware we couldn't replace because the launch windows had closed. All those moments will be lost in time, like packets in space. Time to reboot.
- dnqthao 9mo agoKudos to your reference to Blade Runner
- Foobar8568 9mo agoIt has some Highlander 2 vibes...