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> Bezos has been pushing manufacturing-in-space for a long time, as a ideal candidate for what to do in space that you might prefer to not do on Earth. Robotics

> Bezos has been pushing manufacturing-in-space for a long time, as a ideal candidate for what to do in space that you might prefer to not do on Earth. Robotics, AI automation, manufacturing - combo it in space, let the robots manufacture for us in space. LOL, this seems so far off from the reality of what manufacturing looks like in reality. - sending raw materials up there - service technicians are necessary ALL THE TIME, in fully automated production lines - sending stuff back down Maybe I lack vision, but data centers in space is a 1000x times better idea and that is already a terrible idea.

nunez 8mo ago
The show For All Mankind kind-of hinted at how the labor problem would be solved: recruit like the military and promise huge bonuses that will probably not be realized because space is risky business
bonesss 8mo ago
I think it makes more sense if you invert the manufacturing cycle. Automated asteroid mining, and asteroid harvesting, are potential areas where we have strong tech, a reasonable pure automation story, and huge financial upsides. Trillion dollar asteroids... If we’re sourcing metals out there, and producing for orbital operations or interplanetary shenanigans, the need for computing and automation up there emerges. And I imagine for the billionaire investor class now is the window to make those kinds of plays. A whole set of galactic robber barons is gonna be crowned, and orbital automation is critical to deciding who that is.
bigbuppo 8mo ago
Well you see, what you do is send a bunch of humanoid robots up there to do all the work. (please don't ask what we do when those break down)
kamaal 8mo ago
>>sending raw materials up there That's what asteroid mining is for. >>service technicians are necessary ALL THE TIME Optimus is already very well tele-operated. Even though over time it can likely be trained to do specific tasks far better than even humans.
- _fizz_buzz_ 8mo ago
  > That's what asteroid mining is for. I think you might have no sense of what it takes to go from a raw mined material to something that can be used in a factory. I am not saying it cannot be done. I am just saying it cannot be done in a way that is cheaper than on earth.
- kergonath 8mo ago
  > That's what asteroid mining is for. It’s not necessarily cheaper energetically to get stuff from an asteroid than from Earth. You’d have to accelerate stuff from a wildly different orbit, and then steer it and slow it down. Metric tonnes of stuff. It’s not physically impossible, but it is wildly expensive (in pure energy terms, not even talking about money) and completely impractical with current technology. We just don’t have engines capable of doing this outside the atmosphere.
  - mr_toad 8mo ago
    > It’s not necessarily cheaper energetically to get stuff from an asteroid than from Earth. You’d have to accelerate stuff from a wildly different orbit, and then steer it and slow it down. Delta V from just about anywhere in the solar system is lower than launching from the surface of Earth. You could launch stuff from Mars and bring it back to Earth orbit with less energy than launching it from Earth. The rocket equation is really punishing.
    - kergonath 8mo ago
      Right. The alternative is not to send materials from Earth for processing in space, that would be stupid. We send finished stuff, which were manufactured on the ground. But you don’t mine finished widgets from asteroids. You mine ore that needs refining and processing before being used to manufacture things. This ore is orders of magnitude heavier than the finished products, never mind all that’s required to do anything useful with it.
- moogly 8mo ago
  > Optimus is already very well tele-operated It can't even serve popcorn in a diner.
mike_hearn 8mo ago
Space manufacturing is a real thing, there are already companies trialling it. The factory is small, satellite sized, and it deorbits when the manufacturing run is done. The results are protected enough for them to be picked up from Earth. The justification (today) is that you can do very exotic things in zero-G that aren't possible on Earth. Growing ultra-pure crystals and fibre optics and similar.
- _fizz_buzz_ 8mo ago
  Ok, that I might buy. If there is a product one can build in zero-G that one cannot build on earth. Especially something like growing crystalls. Sure. But trying to compete with something that can just as well be build on earth on the premise that it will be cheaper to do the same thing just in space is insane. It's the same issue that I have with data centers in space. I don't think there is any big technical hurdle to send a GPU rack into space and run it there. The problem is that I have a hard time to believe it is cheaper to run a datacenter in space. When you have to compete solely on cost, it will super hard.
  - mike_hearn 8mo ago
    I don't think it's insane. It might not work or be competitive but it's not obviously insane. In a frictionless economy governed by spherical cows it'd be insane. But back here on Earth, AI is heavily bottlenecked by the refusal or inability of the supply chain to scale up. They think AI firms are in a bubble and will collapse, so don't want to be bag holders. A very sane concern indeed. But it does mean that inferencing (the bit that makes money) is constantly saturated even with the industry straining every sinew to build out capacity. One bottleneck is TSMC. Not much that can be done about that. The other is the grid. Grid equipment manufacturers and CCGT makers like Siemens aren't spinning up extra manufacturing capacity, again because they fear being bag holders when Altman runs out of cash. Then you have massive interconnection backlogs, environmentalists attacking you and other practical problems. Is it easier to get access to stable electricity supplies in space? It's not inconceivable. At the very least, in space Elon controls the full stack with nearly no regulations getting in the way after launch - it's a pure engineering problem of the sort SpaceX are good at. If he needs more power he can just build it, he doesn't have to try and convince some local government utility to scale up or give him air permits to run generators. In space, nobody can hear you(r GPUs) scream.

nunez 8mo ago

The show For All Mankind kind-of hinted at how the labor problem would be solved: recruit like the military and promise huge bonuses that will probably not be realized because space is risky business

bonesss 8mo ago

I think it makes more sense if you invert the manufacturing cycle. Automated asteroid mining, and asteroid harvesting, are potential areas where we have strong tech, a reasonable pure automation story, and huge financial upsides. Trillion dollar asteroids... If we’re sourcing metals out there, and producing for orbital operations or interplanetary shenanigans, the need for computing and automation up there emerges. And I imagine for the billionaire investor class now is the window to make those kinds of plays. A whole set of galactic robber barons is gonna be crowned, and orbital automation is critical to deciding who that is.

bigbuppo 8mo ago

Well you see, what you do is send a bunch of humanoid robots up there to do all the work. (please don't ask what we do when those break down)

kamaal 8mo ago

>>sending raw materials up there That's what asteroid mining is for. >>service technicians are necessary ALL THE TIME Optimus is already very well tele-operated. Even though over time it can likely be trained to do specific tasks far better than even humans.

_fizz_buzz_ 8mo ago
> That's what asteroid mining is for. I think you might have no sense of what it takes to go from a raw mined material to something that can be used in a factory. I am not saying it cannot be done. I am just saying it cannot be done in a way that is cheaper than on earth.
kergonath 8mo ago
> That's what asteroid mining is for. It’s not necessarily cheaper energetically to get stuff from an asteroid than from Earth. You’d have to accelerate stuff from a wildly different orbit, and then steer it and slow it down. Metric tonnes of stuff. It’s not physically impossible, but it is wildly expensive (in pure energy terms, not even talking about money) and completely impractical with current technology. We just don’t have engines capable of doing this outside the atmosphere.
- mr_toad 8mo ago
  > It’s not necessarily cheaper energetically to get stuff from an asteroid than from Earth. You’d have to accelerate stuff from a wildly different orbit, and then steer it and slow it down. Delta V from just about anywhere in the solar system is lower than launching from the surface of Earth. You could launch stuff from Mars and bring it back to Earth orbit with less energy than launching it from Earth. The rocket equation is really punishing.
  - kergonath 8mo ago
    Right. The alternative is not to send materials from Earth for processing in space, that would be stupid. We send finished stuff, which were manufactured on the ground. But you don’t mine finished widgets from asteroids. You mine ore that needs refining and processing before being used to manufacture things. This ore is orders of magnitude heavier than the finished products, never mind all that’s required to do anything useful with it.
moogly 8mo ago
> Optimus is already very well tele-operated It can't even serve popcorn in a diner.

mike_hearn 8mo ago

Space manufacturing is a real thing, there are already companies trialling it. The factory is small, satellite sized, and it deorbits when the manufacturing run is done. The results are protected enough for them to be picked up from Earth. The justification (today) is that you can do very exotic things in zero-G that aren't possible on Earth. Growing ultra-pure crystals and fibre optics and similar.

_fizz_buzz_ 8mo ago
Ok, that I might buy. If there is a product one can build in zero-G that one cannot build on earth. Especially something like growing crystalls. Sure. But trying to compete with something that can just as well be build on earth on the premise that it will be cheaper to do the same thing just in space is insane. It's the same issue that I have with data centers in space. I don't think there is any big technical hurdle to send a GPU rack into space and run it there. The problem is that I have a hard time to believe it is cheaper to run a datacenter in space. When you have to compete solely on cost, it will super hard.
- mike_hearn 8mo ago
  I don't think it's insane. It might not work or be competitive but it's not obviously insane. In a frictionless economy governed by spherical cows it'd be insane. But back here on Earth, AI is heavily bottlenecked by the refusal or inability of the supply chain to scale up. They think AI firms are in a bubble and will collapse, so don't want to be bag holders. A very sane concern indeed. But it does mean that inferencing (the bit that makes money) is constantly saturated even with the industry straining every sinew to build out capacity. One bottleneck is TSMC. Not much that can be done about that. The other is the grid. Grid equipment manufacturers and CCGT makers like Siemens aren't spinning up extra manufacturing capacity, again because they fear being bag holders when Altman runs out of cash. Then you have massive interconnection backlogs, environmentalists attacking you and other practical problems. Is it easier to get access to stable electricity supplies in space? It's not inconceivable. At the very least, in space Elon controls the full stack with nearly no regulations getting in the way after launch - it's a pure engineering problem of the sort SpaceX are good at. If he needs more power he can just build it, he doesn't have to try and convince some local government utility to scale up or give him air permits to run generators. In space, nobody can hear you(r GPUs) scream.