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It's hard for an uprising of poor people to shut it off. It's the ideal place to run your CEO / President simulations. I say this tongue in cheek, but in all

It's hard for an uprising of poor people to shut it off. It's the ideal place to run your CEO / President simulations. I say this tongue in cheek, but in all seriousness, I can't really think of any other benefit, and I no longer have a lot of faith in the good sense of some of the people involved.

vessenes 7mo ago
Elon makes a relatively good case in the Dwarkesh podcast. I recall it like this: 1) Energy infra is going to be seriously limited on the production side well, well below demand 2) energy engineering solar for space requires less materials than for gravity-based solar (!) 3) you cut out distribution network needs when you just launch stuff all per-pod in space 4) SpaceX thinks it can create a scalable vertically integrated production facility to turn raw materials into space datacenter pods, with the exception of chips. As a business bet, this is predicated on 10,000x inference demand growth - if we have that, and SpaceX can get the integrated production rolling, and get Starship launching, then these will be actively utilized at scale. Whether you are bullish on the whole plan should, I think come down to your take on those priors: 10kx growth, ability to manage supply chain and production, Starship outlook, and silicon access. I'm not bearish on this after listening to the podcast; it has a very Elon-like returns distribution - if they're wrong on a lot of this, they'll probably have some moderately price-competitive datacenter facilities in space and a lot of built organizational knowhow while Brooklyn journalists dunk on them for spending all that effort to just replicate what we have on Earth. If they're right about most of this, they'll have an unreplicable head start, both due to years of experience, and due to the cheap launch they gambled on ten years ago, they'll have a nearly insurmountable moat.
- kybernetikos 7mo ago
  Everything relating to a datacentre that you can do in space you can do more easily on earth, regardless of 10,000x inference growth or supply chain or production or starship or silicon. I just don't think you can be cost competitive with earth bound data centres if 'protected from the poors' isn't a selling point. By the way, 10,000x inference growth would look like what happened with cryptocurrency mining - after a couple of years, you'd be needing to upgrade all your machines with ASICs and the market would be flooded with very cheap graphics cards. I doubt that upgrading space data centres would be fun.
  - vessenes 7mo ago
    Zoning is one area that’s better in space. And power density for solar is another. I don’t get your mining analogy though - a non upgradable data center pod is either going to pay off its capital costs or it won’t. Once it has, any revenue is close to 100% profit. 10k demand increase is the opposite of mining dynamics: there you get a 10k supply increase that the price has to support, in combination with more efficient silicon. Here the demand drives revenue and earnings. If there’s some crazy inflection point in chips then you’ll still have all the power infra in space - you can just like cut the old pod and hook up a new one: or more likely manufacturing economies of scale mean you probably just keep sending up new systems and put the old ones on work loads they can manage at market prices.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - CamperBob2 7mo ago
      Zoning is one area that’s better in space. Not really, though? The idea that Earth-based data centers need to be built in populated, developed areas is indeed dumb, yet it seems to be inexplicably baked into everyone's assumptions. In particular, the small discrete data centers that Musk wants to launch could go anywhere on Earth. They could be powered by local PV arrays and batteries, they can be cooled by smaller radiators than they would need to use in space, and they could be networked via Starlink or something very much like it, just as they would need to be networked in space. There's nothing special about space, it just costs more to get there. If he wants them to be out of reach of governments, why not put them on container ships in international waters? There are thousands at sea at any given time, and I'm sure their operators would be happy to rent them out. Hell, put them on dirigibles that just drift around in international airspace for months at a time. Anywhere but space. And power density for solar is another. Does power density matter in terrestrial solar applications? If so, why? These things can and should be deployed in oceans, deserts, and trackless wastelands. Who cares how big the solar panels are?
      - rincebrain 7mo ago
- tartoran 7mo ago
  How is cooling though?
  - vessenes 7mo ago
    Yeah I wonder the same thing - I keep getting told heat management in space is hard, but nobody discusses this inre the data centers. My understanding is one cooling mechanism is to just shoot lasers out into space (is this sci fi?) - I guess in that case you could just send energy back to your solar rigs, depending on wavelengths. TLDR: no idea
    - tartoran 7mo ago
      The whole thing is pie in the sky same as landing people on Mars. It's cool but if you look into deeper it doesn't make much sense and it's extremely challenging and on top of it all expensive as hell.
    - kybernetikos 7mo ago
      I understand that in earth based data centers, 30-40% of the power is spent on cooling. That's in facilities that can cool using conduction and convection to the outside environment. I don't have any experience in this area, but it seems like for every square meter of solar panel you need about half that in radiator area. And depending on your orbit, these are probably not static things just sitting there, they need to be orientated correctly to work and their correct orientations will change over time. The worry for me is the level of human maintenance required. The ISS has probably the biggest solar array around, and they send humans out to perform maintainance and repair on it multiple times a year. A decent size data center would need an order of magnitude more solar and radiators than the ISS, and so presumably would need even more maintenance.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- imiric 7mo ago
  You forgot 5: SpaceX has a monopoly on deploying satellites to LEO, with practically unlimited room for growth, and far less red tape and obstacles than anywhere on Earth. Whatever R&D and operational costs this insane engineering feat might have are offset by their market advantage, and Musk's Elizabeth Holmes-ian capability to fund his projects, in addition to relying on his own personal wealth and all of his other companies combined. The fact that this lunatic is polluting humanity's view into the universe mainly for enriching himself and his shareholders, and that everyone is playing along with this, is sickening.
- skywhopper 7mo ago
  Every one of those points is false or an outright lie, though.
- ActorNightly 7mo ago
  >Elon makes a relatively good case in the Dwarkesh podcast. Are we still going to pretend that the man who has gotten every single prediction wrong so far knows what he is talking about?
  - yndoendo 7mo ago
    He has never made a good case only coherent stories people believe. He has been saying self driving cars are right around the corner 10+ years by using a staged video. I will never forget this statement; _I don't know anything about EVs so when he talked I believed him. I don't know anything about rockets so when he talked I believed him. I most defiantly know about software development and when he opens his mouth I know he is lying." Still don't get what people see in him. Deep down he is not a good person and will say anything to pump up his image and stock. P.S. Number of his fans like to down vote people for calling him a bad person.
  - bobsmooth 7mo ago
    Are we still going to pretend that the man who has revolutionized at least 2 different industries doesn't know what he's talking about?
    - ActorNightly 7mo ago
      He didn't revolutionize shit. He just threw enough VC money and paid the right people enough to eventually make a product that sticks. It took Space X multitude of crashes, downright scamming their suppliers, and lots of turnover to do something that other companies did in a few years. And the Starship is just laughably stupid. And Tesla's only success is because they were subsidized like crazy. Of course people are going to purchase cheap electric cars with no maintenance. If BYD was allowed to operate in US, Tesla would have been under ground long time ago. But I get your sentiment though. You are so far down the conservatism rabbit hole and probably have some inappropriate thoughts towards children, so you have to defend Musk till you die because god forbid you admit to yourself that you are terrible human being.

vessenes 7mo ago

Elon makes a relatively good case in the Dwarkesh podcast. I recall it like this: 1) Energy infra is going to be seriously limited on the production side well, well below demand 2) energy engineering solar for space requires less materials than for gravity-based solar (!) 3) you cut out distribution network needs when you just launch stuff all per-pod in space 4) SpaceX thinks it can create a scalable vertically integrated production facility to turn raw materials into space datacenter pods, with the exception of chips. As a business bet, this is predicated on 10,000x inference demand growth - if we have that, and SpaceX can get the integrated production rolling, and get Starship launching, then these will be actively utilized at scale. Whether you are bullish on the whole plan should, I think come down to your take on those priors: 10kx growth, ability to manage supply chain and production, Starship outlook, and silicon access. I'm not bearish on this after listening to the podcast; it has a very Elon-like returns distribution - if they're wrong on a lot of this, they'll probably have some moderately price-competitive datacenter facilities in space and a lot of built organizational knowhow while Brooklyn journalists dunk on them for spending all that effort to just replicate what we have on Earth. If they're right about most of this, they'll have an unreplicable head start, both due to years of experience, and due to the cheap launch they gambled on ten years ago, they'll have a nearly insurmountable moat.

kybernetikos 7mo ago
Everything relating to a datacentre that you can do in space you can do more easily on earth, regardless of 10,000x inference growth or supply chain or production or starship or silicon. I just don't think you can be cost competitive with earth bound data centres if 'protected from the poors' isn't a selling point. By the way, 10,000x inference growth would look like what happened with cryptocurrency mining - after a couple of years, you'd be needing to upgrade all your machines with ASICs and the market would be flooded with very cheap graphics cards. I doubt that upgrading space data centres would be fun.
- vessenes 7mo ago
  Zoning is one area that’s better in space. And power density for solar is another. I don’t get your mining analogy though - a non upgradable data center pod is either going to pay off its capital costs or it won’t. Once it has, any revenue is close to 100% profit. 10k demand increase is the opposite of mining dynamics: there you get a 10k supply increase that the price has to support, in combination with more efficient silicon. Here the demand drives revenue and earnings. If there’s some crazy inflection point in chips then you’ll still have all the power infra in space - you can just like cut the old pod and hook up a new one: or more likely manufacturing economies of scale mean you probably just keep sending up new systems and put the old ones on work loads they can manage at market prices.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - CamperBob2 7mo ago
    Zoning is one area that’s better in space. Not really, though? The idea that Earth-based data centers need to be built in populated, developed areas is indeed dumb, yet it seems to be inexplicably baked into everyone's assumptions. In particular, the small discrete data centers that Musk wants to launch could go anywhere on Earth. They could be powered by local PV arrays and batteries, they can be cooled by smaller radiators than they would need to use in space, and they could be networked via Starlink or something very much like it, just as they would need to be networked in space. There's nothing special about space, it just costs more to get there. If he wants them to be out of reach of governments, why not put them on container ships in international waters? There are thousands at sea at any given time, and I'm sure their operators would be happy to rent them out. Hell, put them on dirigibles that just drift around in international airspace for months at a time. Anywhere but space. And power density for solar is another. Does power density matter in terrestrial solar applications? If so, why? These things can and should be deployed in oceans, deserts, and trackless wastelands. Who cares how big the solar panels are?
    - rincebrain 7mo ago
tartoran 7mo ago
How is cooling though?
- vessenes 7mo ago
  Yeah I wonder the same thing - I keep getting told heat management in space is hard, but nobody discusses this inre the data centers. My understanding is one cooling mechanism is to just shoot lasers out into space (is this sci fi?) - I guess in that case you could just send energy back to your solar rigs, depending on wavelengths. TLDR: no idea
  - tartoran 7mo ago
    The whole thing is pie in the sky same as landing people on Mars. It's cool but if you look into deeper it doesn't make much sense and it's extremely challenging and on top of it all expensive as hell.
  - kybernetikos 7mo ago
    I understand that in earth based data centers, 30-40% of the power is spent on cooling. That's in facilities that can cool using conduction and convection to the outside environment. I don't have any experience in this area, but it seems like for every square meter of solar panel you need about half that in radiator area. And depending on your orbit, these are probably not static things just sitting there, they need to be orientated correctly to work and their correct orientations will change over time. The worry for me is the level of human maintenance required. The ISS has probably the biggest solar array around, and they send humans out to perform maintainance and repair on it multiple times a year. A decent size data center would need an order of magnitude more solar and radiators than the ISS, and so presumably would need even more maintenance.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
imiric 7mo ago
You forgot 5: SpaceX has a monopoly on deploying satellites to LEO, with practically unlimited room for growth, and far less red tape and obstacles than anywhere on Earth. Whatever R&D and operational costs this insane engineering feat might have are offset by their market advantage, and Musk's Elizabeth Holmes-ian capability to fund his projects, in addition to relying on his own personal wealth and all of his other companies combined. The fact that this lunatic is polluting humanity's view into the universe mainly for enriching himself and his shareholders, and that everyone is playing along with this, is sickening.
skywhopper 7mo ago
Every one of those points is false or an outright lie, though.
ActorNightly 7mo ago
>Elon makes a relatively good case in the Dwarkesh podcast. Are we still going to pretend that the man who has gotten every single prediction wrong so far knows what he is talking about?
- yndoendo 7mo ago
  He has never made a good case only coherent stories people believe. He has been saying self driving cars are right around the corner 10+ years by using a staged video. I will never forget this statement; _I don't know anything about EVs so when he talked I believed him. I don't know anything about rockets so when he talked I believed him. I most defiantly know about software development and when he opens his mouth I know he is lying." Still don't get what people see in him. Deep down he is not a good person and will say anything to pump up his image and stock. P.S. Number of his fans like to down vote people for calling him a bad person.
- bobsmooth 7mo ago
  Are we still going to pretend that the man who has revolutionized at least 2 different industries doesn't know what he's talking about?
  - ActorNightly 7mo ago
    He didn't revolutionize shit. He just threw enough VC money and paid the right people enough to eventually make a product that sticks. It took Space X multitude of crashes, downright scamming their suppliers, and lots of turnover to do something that other companies did in a few years. And the Starship is just laughably stupid. And Tesla's only success is because they were subsidized like crazy. Of course people are going to purchase cheap electric cars with no maintenance. If BYD was allowed to operate in US, Tesla would have been under ground long time ago. But I get your sentiment though. You are so far down the conservatism rabbit hole and probably have some inappropriate thoughts towards children, so you have to defend Musk till you die because god forbid you admit to yourself that you are terrible human being.