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Starlink seems like a no-brainer at this late date, but I remember thinking "He'll never be able to make money from internet satellites. This has to be some ki

Starlink seems like a no-brainer at this late date, but I remember thinking "He'll never be able to make money from internet satellites. This has to be some kind of scam. Look what happened to Irridium." Data centers in orbit certainly seem like a pipe dream, but SpaceX certainly has the technology it needs to put them there, and that's a huge competitive advantage (like it was for Starlink) if they do turn out to be feasible.

damnitbuilds 7mo ago
I'd like to see lists of "Things Elon Musk will never be able to make money from, but did" and "Things Elon Musk will never be able to make money from, and didn't".
- amoss 7mo ago
  Cybertrucks. Electric semis. Full self driving. Battery city. I'll leave up to the reader to put them on the appropriate list.
  - ckemere 7mo ago
    Technically, the question was about Elon personally, eh (not Tesla).
  - Someone 7mo ago
    I think Elon made loads of money from full self driving, without Tesla even delivering it once. He personally might have made money on Cybertrucks, too.
- drzaiusx11 7mo ago
  Cult of personality will take you pretty far apparently. So far in Elon's case he could drop his mask of technical genius and become an inordinatly wealthy memelord/shitposter and still have a following.
- venusenvy47 7mo ago
  Short list: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk-twitter-zuckerberg-lies-1234808808/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk... longer list: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/
muskstinks 7mo ago
Star link is not a 'no-brainer' they currently have 9/10 million customers and need 10k star link satelites. One satelite costs 300k and works for 5 years. To this, they need humans operating the space side, the base station, they need base stations etc. It is affected by weather as well. Its not a 'no-brainer' and while space x showed its somehow a business, amazon and others are entering this space now too. So they never had a first mover financial advantage making big bucks and others are coming which will drive customer base and margin down. And data center in orbit is not just a pipe dream, its stupid on a whole new level. Smart would have been to build like a DC City in the middle of the USA were its super cheap and introducing the necessary infrastructure to it. But alone the R&D, the sending it up there, solving hard space problems just to not being able to touch hardware when it fails, man thats stupidity on a whole new level.
- drzaiusx11 7mo ago
  It's stupid, but it mostly works because they also own the sat deployment side of the equation as well. Dropping the cost to launch (replacement sats etc) by continuing to take greater piece of all total space launches along with large step function capacity refinements with each new rocket generation, means they will continue to push the economics in their favor. $300k/sat might not be worth it, but unless there's a number of back to back unmitigated disasters with their new rockets (totally possible given the cost of getting it wrong) launch costs will continue to drop as they iterate. Even in the worst case where starship never works, they can still salvage and continually refine their current proven designs. That said, I do not trust their IPO valuations at all. I have enormous respect for what SpaceX has accomplished in such a short time span. When the US government deprioritized further space R&D for all launch vehicles and relied entirely on Russian launch vehicles, I honestly thought it was the end of an era of innovation in space in my (current) country. I'm glad I was wrong to some extent, even if it means an over reliance on the private sector to make further progress. You may point out that private space ventures sadly have similar problems to ceding to foreign nations, and you wouldn't be wrong. The only silver lining for me is getting to see continued progress in my lifetime. It doesn't take all the sting out of government funding drying up for space launch vehicles, especially when our other budgets like defense are so insane, but I'll take it at face value as a victory for humanity to continually improve space capabilities at scale in any form.
wwweston 7mo ago
Personally I just don’t believe “data centers in space” is a sincere goal. There’s no way any of the cooling benefits or whatever offsets the additional layers of significant construction and maintenance challenges, collision and other environmental risks, and unknown risks. There’s no way. Every proposal is either a bid for capital via moonshot enthusiasm or a stalking horse for something else, and these days I wouldn’t be surprised if it was orbital weapons platforms in disguise.

damnitbuilds 7mo ago

I'd like to see lists of "Things Elon Musk will never be able to make money from, but did" and "Things Elon Musk will never be able to make money from, and didn't".

amoss 7mo ago
Cybertrucks. Electric semis. Full self driving. Battery city. I'll leave up to the reader to put them on the appropriate list.
- ckemere 7mo ago
  Technically, the question was about Elon personally, eh (not Tesla).
- Someone 7mo ago
  I think Elon made loads of money from full self driving, without Tesla even delivering it once. He personally might have made money on Cybertrucks, too.
drzaiusx11 7mo ago
Cult of personality will take you pretty far apparently. So far in Elon's case he could drop his mask of technical genius and become an inordinatly wealthy memelord/shitposter and still have a following.
venusenvy47 7mo ago
Short list: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk-twitter-zuckerberg-lies-1234808808/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk... longer list: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/

muskstinks 7mo ago

Star link is not a 'no-brainer' they currently have 9/10 million customers and need 10k star link satelites. One satelite costs 300k and works for 5 years. To this, they need humans operating the space side, the base station, they need base stations etc. It is affected by weather as well. Its not a 'no-brainer' and while space x showed its somehow a business, amazon and others are entering this space now too. So they never had a first mover financial advantage making big bucks and others are coming which will drive customer base and margin down. And data center in orbit is not just a pipe dream, its stupid on a whole new level. Smart would have been to build like a DC City in the middle of the USA were its super cheap and introducing the necessary infrastructure to it. But alone the R&D, the sending it up there, solving hard space problems just to not being able to touch hardware when it fails, man thats stupidity on a whole new level.

drzaiusx11 7mo ago
It's stupid, but it mostly works because they also own the sat deployment side of the equation as well. Dropping the cost to launch (replacement sats etc) by continuing to take greater piece of all total space launches along with large step function capacity refinements with each new rocket generation, means they will continue to push the economics in their favor. $300k/sat might not be worth it, but unless there's a number of back to back unmitigated disasters with their new rockets (totally possible given the cost of getting it wrong) launch costs will continue to drop as they iterate. Even in the worst case where starship never works, they can still salvage and continually refine their current proven designs. That said, I do not trust their IPO valuations at all. I have enormous respect for what SpaceX has accomplished in such a short time span. When the US government deprioritized further space R&D for all launch vehicles and relied entirely on Russian launch vehicles, I honestly thought it was the end of an era of innovation in space in my (current) country. I'm glad I was wrong to some extent, even if it means an over reliance on the private sector to make further progress. You may point out that private space ventures sadly have similar problems to ceding to foreign nations, and you wouldn't be wrong. The only silver lining for me is getting to see continued progress in my lifetime. It doesn't take all the sting out of government funding drying up for space launch vehicles, especially when our other budgets like defense are so insane, but I'll take it at face value as a victory for humanity to continually improve space capabilities at scale in any form.

wwweston 7mo ago

Personally I just don’t believe “data centers in space” is a sincere goal. There’s no way any of the cooling benefits or whatever offsets the additional layers of significant construction and maintenance challenges, collision and other environmental risks, and unknown risks. There’s no way. Every proposal is either a bid for capital via moonshot enthusiasm or a stalking horse for something else, and these days I wouldn’t be surprised if it was orbital weapons platforms in disguise.