11 ms·
Starship V3
- dmix 5mo agoOne more week > Liftoff will occur at 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday (May 19) https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacexs-starship-v3-megarocket-finally-has-a-debut-launch-date-heres-when-it-will-fly https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
- laweijfmvo 5mo agoisn’t Monday the 18th?
- tristanj 5mo agoYes, the linked space.com article has an error. The launch is happening Tuesday the 19th.
- kyriakos 5mo agoPage banned in my country apparently
- adastra22 5mo agoWhat is your country?
- kyriakos 5mo agoCyprus I get "The owner of this website (spacex.com) has banned the country or region your IP address is in (CY) from accessing this website."
- adastra22 5mo agoCyprus is on the proscribed countries list for ITAR.
- kyriakos 5mo agoDon't want to get into political discussions but isn't ITAR about defence tech?
- chainingsolid 5mo agoRockets are classified ITAR. There 1/2 of a ballistic missile.
- adastra22 5mo agoThe difference between a rocket and an ICBM is what payload you put on it.
- Klaster_1 5mo agoSame here! New Firefox VPN feature comes in really handy here - just toggle it on and the access is back, load the page and turn off again.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- moralestapia 5mo ago[flagged]
- brcmthrowaway 5mo agoFound an investor in the IPO
- BoxedEmpathy 5mo agoI don't like Elon and I'm still going to buy into the SpaceX IPO
- stickfigure 5mo agoWhy? Have you run the math and genuinely belive the future profits justify the valuation, or is your thesis that there will be greater fools? Do you actually believe this data centers in space nonsense?
- brcmthrowaway 5mo agoHow does one do this?
- hparadiz 5mo agoClose ups of the tail fins and the hull exterior have little hex tiles covering the entire tail fin assembly. There's also different sizes of tile. Exciting to see if that will be enough structural reinforcement.
- randallsquared 5mo agoYeah, the tile complexity is worrying. I hope they're able to simplify that or fully streamline the manufacturing and attachment. From the outside, the tiles seem like a Shuttle re-run, and refurbishment of those was one of the long poles in reuse.
- larusso 5mo agoBut for the shuttle each title was kinda unique and had a specific spot. If they managed to find a shape where you don’t have to mark each tile but can just pull them from a box for replacement is a huge win. Maybe even have some spares and allow them to be replaced during an EVA. This was all not really feasible with the Spaceshuttle.
- randallsquared 5mo agoIndeed! On Starship v1, that's what they started out doing: each tile was the same, and there was awkward placement and notable gaps, especially along the fins. I think they were hoping that this would be good enough, but that dream was dashed. I just hope that it can be completely standardized to provide the benefits you mentioned. I suppose it really helps that they'll be building thousands of these things instead of single digits!
- xnx 5mo ago> awkward placement and notable gaps The places that are awkward to tile are the spots that need tile the most.
- hgoel 5mo agoThe other aspect is the stainless steel hull that can take more punishment, mechanical mounting of tiles rather than glue (though iirc some places still ended up having to use glue) and more developed automation tech making it realistic to get a machine to do the installation and inspection work. Also, the ability to fly without crew and the willingness to have highly visible failures means they can actually exercise the heat shield to understand what works.
- vzaliva 5mo agoReading reports of people objecting datacenters build in their states I wonder how Florida residents feel about the Spaceport ? It will certainly be more distruptive than datacenters.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- nik282000 5mo agoThere's only one Spaceport.
- gpm 5mo agoSpaceX has openly advertised their intent to turn starship into a faster long distance travel alternative to airplanes. Their intent, should all go well, is to have many, many, spaceports. For their conventional space launch operations they also want multiple... to target different orbits, and to parallelize the high volume operations they anticipate. There's already two Starship launch sites. The one in use in Texas, and one (LC-39A) in development at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. And there's good reason to believe they've begun planning a third in Louisiana. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=64900.0 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=64900.0
- tristanj 5mo agoA spaceport will probably use less water /s On a more serious note, the Cape Canaveral area / Kennedy Space Center has a large amount of empty land to build space infrastructure. The island has been dedicated to space facilities since the 1960s. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have facilities there.
- jdw64 5mo ago[dead]
- vjvjvjvjghv 5mo agoSome people close to their facility in Texas aren’t too happy with the noise.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- a34729t 5mo agoThe new more powerful engines with built in heat shield are a phenomenal achievement. Hopefully they perform as good as they look!
- danpalmer 5mo ago[flagged]
- narrator 5mo ago[flagged]
- emkoemko 5mo agoumm we all helped? its called taxes... how do you think Starship is being funded ?
- eagerpace 5mo agoBy an already super profitable SpaceX. The moon stuff is a drop in the bucket and only came well after success. What other company would you rather see funding go to?
- overfeed 5mo ago> What other company would you rather see funding go to? I'd rather not give any welfare-queen company another taxpayer dime.
- slac 5mo agoGotta pump that Grok IPO /s Seriously though, the whole SpaceXAI makes zero sense to me. SpaceX was a wonderful company and there was zero need to pollute it with Twitter and a service that creates sexual images of people without their consent.
- etchalon 5mo agoYou forget that Musk has to make all the idiots who gave him capital for Twitter whole, somehow.
- xbmcuser 5mo agoTesla has been out competed in Batteries, EV's and Robots so this is his new move. He did something similar with his solar panel company put it inside Tesla and then it has almost disappeared from the news. He puts the AI company inside of Spacex makes up a lot of unrealistic numbers to pump up price and captures most of the stock gains from Spacex IPO by diluting others people shares.
- Valakas_ 5mo agoYou make it sound like Tesla was a failure and he's only interested in capitalistic success, where if you've been following him for years you'd know this has been his plan all along. He built Tesla when electric cars were mocked and his plan was to push electric cars to be mainstream. To now say "Tesla has been outcompeted and so now he's doing something else [implied- to keep his power]" is to simplify and misinterpret the situation. Tesla has successfully lit a fire under the car manufacturer's world, to the point all of them started making electric cars.
- msk-lywenn 5mo agoHe is so good at rewriting history. People buy it so much, it’s incredible. He didn’t build Tesla, Eberhard and Tarpenning did.
- NetMageSCW 5mo ago
- phren0logy 5mo agoI was disappointed when this was not the command line prompt library
- icosahedron 5mo agoSame!
- analog_daddy 5mo agoYeah same here. Isn’t it weird, thet i used to be a lot more excited about space travel however, as I grow older I am excited about things more closer to me. Still curious, but focus has shifted from great for humanity to will make my life easier. Just feels more closer and impactful (to me).
- similarboy 5mo agoalso first thing that crossed my mind!
- gok 5mo agoIt's a fascinating design but it's been 14 years since the concept was first announced and it's never really completely worked. If it ever was possible, it's not clear the talent for it still works for SpaceX.
- beambot 5mo agoThose Raptor 3 engines are a thing of beautiful simplicity compared to their forebears...
- eagerpace 5mo agoAnd to think, it wasn’t that long ago competitors we still using old Russian engines for their domestic rockets. Brilliant work to get back to leadership in this domain.
- kobieps 5mo agoThe outcome is guaranteed to be entertaining
- inglor_cz 5mo agoThe engines for New Glenn ain't bad either. Competition does improve products.
- laughing_man 5mo agoNew Glenn's engines are quite a bit less efficient than those at SpaceX. Lower chamber pressures, lower thrust:weight ratio, and they're partial flow staged combustion. I assume BO will increase their performance over time, but for now they company is about a decade behind SpaceX.
- damnitbuilds 5mo agoSpacex's work is out there ( and I am grateful for the excitement that generates ) but BO work in the shadows, surprising us sometimes with major advances. I suspect BO not as far behind as you think.
- hagbard_c 5mo agoThey'll remain behind as long as they keep copying SpaceX's concepts since they need to wait and see before they can copy.
- spankalee 5mo ago[flagged]
- 01100011 5mo agoYou've got to give him credit though. His caustic managerial style seems to have borne fruit despite his lack of engineering or technical skills. He has been supremely effective at defining a vision(however delusional) and attracting funding. Will we get to Mars soon? Hell no. But we may end up with a world-leading launch provider based in the US and that's a clear win for the country.
- nomel 5mo ago> Will we get to Mars soon? Hell no. How much did he bring in that timeline?
- Forgeties79 5mo agoDon’t buy into the 2010’s Tony stark persona. His momentum is clearly slowing because he can’t put his politics and rather fucked social values behind business sense. I have immense appreciation for what SpaceX has done for humanity. I’m not being dramatic. Reusable rockets alone is an incredible achievement. But he’s lost the plot. He needs to drop his right wing bullshit and stardom chasing if he wants to be taken seriously again. The dude won’t even acknowledge his own kid because of his politics. I will never trust someone who makes that decision, personally. His judgment is beyond clouded. The Elon bros will be mad but whatever. One day he’ll maybe remember why folks liked him. Hitching his wagon to Trump was a dumb move.
- JackFr 5mo agoI think it’s tough to stay grounded when you’re as rich as he is. (To be clear, my intent is to explain and not excuse the path he’s taken.)
- Petersipoi 5mo ago[flagged]
- sergiotapia 5mo agoSpacex may be the most important company on the planet. What greater goal is there than expanding humanity to the stars!
- imbusy111 5mo agoFiguring out a way to coexist peacefully before expanding any further.
- api 5mo agoThen we never go. What if expanding helps us coexist peacefully? Maybe being in a crab bucket with no frontier is part of the issue.
- ivandenysov 5mo agoThose goals can be achieved in parallel.
- tfyoung 5mo agoLooking after the humanity we already have?
- AlexErrant 5mo agoIs this rhetorical? Feeding the hungry. Healing the sick. Educating the masses. Etc, etc. I'm a big space fan, don't get me wrong. But your exuberance uh, needs tempering.
- sergiotapia 5mo agoI meant unobtained goals. More or less those things you mentioned have solutions and they are getting better.
- mathisfun123 5mo ago[flagged]
- BoxedEmpathy 5mo agoI really hope I get to see a permanent settlement on Mars or the moon. I don't care who settles it I just want to see humanity reach for the stars.
- elevaet 5mo agoWe don't even have permanent settlements on Antarctica. Don't hold your breath.
- AlexErrant 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_stations_in_Antarctica#Permanent_active_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_stations_in_Antarctic... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Las_Estrellas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Las_Estrellas
- ActorNightly 5mo agoPermanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere. None of those are self sustaining.
- femto 5mo agoThere's an argument that Earth, as a biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere, also isn't self sustaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day I'd keep the Moonraker film in mind as a metric for self sustaining colonies created by billionaires. They can't be trusted unless they are also working to fix what we already have.
- kelnos 5mo ago> Permanent means self sustaining. No it doesn't. "Permanent settlement" just means it's not temporary, only intended for a short-term mission.
- seemaze 5mo agoAerospace vessel, not terminal prompt.
- christkv 5mo agoI wonder how you solve the cooling issue as you can only shed heat via radiation.
- choilive 5mo agoStefan-Boltzmann law means radiative heat transfer in space is approx. to the 4th power of the hot side of your radiator. Typical space based radiators operate around 350K. If you can increase the hot side of the refrigeration cycle by 4x (1400K) you increase heat transfer by 256x. Create a radiator design that can operate at this temp (multi-stage Brayton loops, heat pumps, possible liquid metal final stage) with a large enough surface area and now a datacenter in space seems possible. It's a difficult engineering challenge but physically possible, and Elon is no stranger to engineering challenges. Some numbers: assume an emissivity of 0.85, assume no absorption from the sun, assume heat rejected from both sides of a panel, a 1m^2 panel will reject 1.45kW/m^2 @ 350K. At 900K its 62 kW/m^2. Not a trivial amount of heat.
- coppsilgold 5mo agoI was actually curious about this myself back when everyone was chiming in about how it was physically impossible. This is first and foremost an engineering problem as you need to design a system that will both tolerate high heat and be able to pump even more heat to the radiators. The high temperature seems to be the primary objective to design for unless launch costs become absurdly low.
- saberience 5mo agoIt's not "impossible" but so hard, complex, and expensive that any "gains" you get from being in space are nothing compared to the costs you pay for being in space. I.e. it's not worth it. The cost of launching 100K servers, each of which needs 20m^2 each of radiator (for a single H200 server), or 250 m^2 for a GB200 rack! Ok but these numbers are for a single server or single rack, now what about a standard cluster size of like... 50k GPUs? You would need (with optimal idealized efficiencies) roughly 64000 m^2 of space to cool down your space data-center. That's 9 American football fields of double sided radiator panels! For a single data-center, and realistically there would be inefficiencies and wastage so it could end up more like 20 American football fields of cooling needed. How's that going to work?
- Fordec 5mo agoThe thing which is seemingly missing from this is their current largest hurdle emerging from the V2 testing. The heat shields keep failing. I guess the focus is going to be on getting stuff up, rather than back down. Thus the Starlink and data center plays, not human space exploration.
- fwipsy 5mo agoIt's okay, Mars doesn't have much atmosphere. We can figure out how to bring them home later.
- mekdoonggi 5mo agoFrom my understanding, they have been intentionally sabotaging the heat shield to test the limits of the ship. They are putting the shield through the ringer to find the extreme boundaries to design around. If they needed land a payload, they could stuff a dragon capsule in the starship, but the point is building something new.
- db48x 5mo agoI think you’re overstating the problem. All of the tests flown so far were deliberately crippled just to see how much they could get away with. They installed fewer tiles than were really needed, leaving gaps in large surfaces and even leaving the hinge areas of the flaps unprotected. The resulting damage was spectacular and terrible for reusability, but the ships still functioned. That actually bodes well for human spaceflight! Losing a tile crippled the Space Shuttle, but the Starship looks to be much more robust.
- Zardoz84 5mo ago> Losing a tile crippled the Space Shuttle Losing a tile on the most damage sensible area of the shuttle.
- oskarkk 5mo agoStarship V2 heat shield was good enough to allow the ship to perform a landing on the ocean in one piece, in a precise spot. But a safe landing is not enough, the ship needs to be in a good enough condition to be flown again, with low refurbishment costs. We still don't know what condition Starship is in after landing (they need to actually land it on land first). I wouldn't say the heat shield is failing, it didn't cause any failure of the ship, it protected it successfully to the sea level. But the heat shield is just not mentioned in this article. They actually made significant changes to it in the new version. They added added new seals between the tiles, improved attachment points, and redesigned the shielding in specific areas. A big problem with their work on the heat shield is that they lost the ship before reentry multiple times for various reasons. They were making changes to the heat shield on previous versions, but couldn't test them as they were repeatedly losing the ship before the heat shield was actually used. Also, from their description of the planned launch of Starship V3: > The Starship upper stage will target multiple in-space and reentry objectives, including the deployment of 22 Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The last two satellites deployed will scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test. > For Starship entry, a single heat shield tile has been intentionally removed to measure the aerodynamic load differences on adjacent tiles when there is a tile missing. https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-12 https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-12 So they're still working on the heat shield. Things like space data centers may be economical only if Starship is fully reusable, otherwise the idea is dead on arrival.
- Melatonic 5mo agoDefinitely some cool photos of Starship V3 - how much of this is new info vs just a press release style announcement? I havent been following the latest rocket news much
- arjie 5mo agoIncredible to get insight into the new things they're trying. Back in the day of the old Space Race this kind of thing was impossible and now an enthusiast can just follow along as incredible feats of engineering are performed. Great stuff! I imagine at least some of the reason to chase the AI datacenters in space thing is because Starship is "too capable" if it succeeds. It makes available a technology that does not have a short-term utility that people will pay for. Starlink was something that's been useful as telecoms but perhaps that market is saturating. It makes sense to pursue what is currently high-utility but is not being met because of terrestrial constraints. Well, good luck to him. A lot of smart people are chasing this idea and I can't seem how it could work, but I was honestly surprised that Tesla hit its production goals, and I was honest surprised that SpaceX hit success so fast, and I was honestly surprised by the rise of LLMs, so the truth is there are lots of paradigm shifts I just miss: BEVs, cheap space, AI. Someone once tweeted something like: > Less intelligent people perceive more intelligent people as incredibly lucky. They always make inscrutably stupid decisions, unjustified by visible information, and somehow fate rewards them for this. But also, I'm just hoping that a new era of space exploration will open up in my lifetime. That sounds incredibly cool! And I dare say there are many people like me in the US at least judging by the popular baby names of this era, which have seen spikes in Aurora, Nova, and Luna - and in the one my daughter has: Astra.
- ghtbircshotbe 5mo agoIf a decision is smart due to having access to non-public information, that is more a question of ignorance than intelligence. I can think of all sorts of successful decisions that would definitely be stupid for a normal person to try, due to lack of connections, access to money, high risk, etc. And maybe to expose my own lack of intelligence, I've always thought eg Robinhood was incredibly dumb. I never in a million years would have thought of the idea of creating an investing app, since there are already many of them, from far more reliable and trustworthy sources. And yet Robinhood has made its founders billions.
- ivolimmen 5mo agoSaw some photo's and the first thing that stands out: the American flag. What's up with that? If you see a product launch in Europe there will be no flag in the photo's (non that I ever saw).
- chrisco255 5mo agoAlmost any average factory floor in the U.S. has an American flag hanging somewhere. Sorry Europe doesn't have any pride in itself!
- ivolimmen 5mo agoI don't think showing a flag is a sign of pride, and as I watch the news it is currently a very misplaced pride in America.
- chrisco255 5mo agoYour biggest problem is watching the news. It is designed to make you angry. Meanwhile, I've never been prouder to be American.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- tstrimple 5mo agoIgnorance really is bliss I guess.
- sixothree 5mo agoThe flag has been coopted as a symbol of right wing nationalist politics. It's the easiest way to identify the right - their very strange love of the flag.
- mdeeks 5mo agoWhat? There are three flags flying in my street alone and I'm in the middle of the liberal bay area.
- elbasti 5mo agoYour daily reminder that there is no scenario in which putting data centers in space is easier than putting them in Texas, or Morocco, or literally anywhere else. The only problem that "data centers in space" solves is the problem of trying to scale a rocket company where the potential demand for rocket launches is simply not that big.
- geertj 5mo agoThe problem putting them in space solves is the approx 5X more solar energy without needing batteries for day and night cycles, along with some smaller wins due to less structural support needed due to microgravity.
- xnx 5mo ago> The problem putting them in space solves is There are a lot of problems that can be solved by creating 20 other, much bigger, problems.
- geertj 5mo agoYou are creating 20 other engineering problems but not 20 other physics problems. You cannot put those in the same bucket. It remains to be seen how efficiently those engineering problems can be solved, but none of the commentators here have any real insight about that (myself included). My money is on the ingenuity of the engineers that are working these problems.
- Geof25 5mo agoAnd then it creates problem with radiation (energy dense particles travelling close to the speed of light ripping holes into 2nm chips) and heat (it turns out that coffee stays hot in a thermos for very long time)
- IshKebab 5mo ago100kW of solar and a massive battery is going to be easily cheaper than a 20kW satellite. Especially in somewhere like Texas.
- TheServitor 5mo ago[flagged]
- 7e 5mo agoV3... the third major redesign, and the second unplanned one. How many verisons will it take? Will Starship beat Full Self Driving into production, or will the hyperloop steal the show? Will it take longer than the Tesla Semi (9 years and counting) or will it pull a Tesla Roadster and never launch at all? Either way, it's sorely needed to meet Musk's goal of landing on Mars by 2018. Or at least to get to zero new cases by the end of April.
- Paradigma11 5mo ago"My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space" Soooo, how much did he put on that outcome on polymarket?
- geertj 5mo agoIf you mean whether he’s putting his money where his mouth is, he is doing that by risking the future of the company that is his biggest asset on it. It may not be exactly 3 years. But is will very likely happen.
- Paradigma11 5mo agoThe point is that he is not putting his money where his predictions are and we should not put any more stock in them than he does.
- itsmek 5mo agoI don't see how he's risking the future of his company by saying words that end up being false, he does that all the time and lying/exaggerating is probably an essential part of being an effective fundraiser these days. In my eyes an enforceable large bet would be much stronger evidence indeed than words. If I'm building a warehouse and I say "this warehouse is going to house the worlds supply of x", am I risking the future of the company if that fails and I pivot to housing y instead?
- Gys 5mo agoWhy would he do that? A successful IPO is the goal. His shares will go sky high. That is where his money is.
- itsmek 5mo agoObviously, but their implicit point is that in your scenario you can win by bluffing as long as you can continue to credibly promise the moon and keep the bet rolling but in their scenario only the final outcome wins. Dude is famous for bluffing so it's a reasonable take.
- NitpickLawyer 5mo agoQuick update for the folks passionate about space things (since this thread is full of unrelated comments): V3 is their first Starship family big upgrade, containing lots of learnings from previous tests, and the big engine upgrades. V3 engines are the first iteration of a production engine, with lots of sensors and auxiliary systems integrated into the engine itself. Besides the improvements in thrust, they've streamlined the production, moved a lot of stuff "inside" the engine (the first iterations looked like something out of the steampunk era), and they've simplified lots of fire/heat protection. The Booster and Ship also got some major redesigns in the way they're handling fuel, the "thrust puck" (the area where the engines get mounted) and so on. It's also a bit taller, helped by the engine upgrades. TWR has also improved, with estimates at 1.6. This should be visibly faster to clear the tower and "jump" the launch. They are also adding ~44tons of simlinks (starlink simulators, dumb payloads). So they seem to have improved the margins for orbital payload a lot. New this launch will be a few sats that have comms & cameras on them. Hopefully we'll get to see outside shots of Starship from these things, on orbit. They've filed FCC paperwork for this, and they'll likely use it to inspect the health of the heatshield on orbit. They've also updated the launch tower, with a flame deflector, and a new deluge system. This flight will be still suborbital, testing payload deployment, booster return to a fixed point somewhere in the coastal waters, and the ship aiming for somewhere in the Indian Ocean. They've also removed some parts of hte heatshield, to test how it handles that. (on a previous flight the ship still nailed its simulated landing with huge gaps in it, from multiple tiles missing intentionally). If everything works on this flight, the next one is planned to be orbital.
- arijun 5mo ago> moved a lot of stuff "inside" the engine The level that they managed to fit everything inside of a simple-looking package was so high that the CEO of ULA (the Boeing/Lockheed Martin rocket company) thought they were lying when they first showed pictures [1]. [1] https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/08/40279896/spacex-president-and-elon-musk-hit-back-at-ula-ceo-for-comments-on-starships-raptor-3-works-pretty-g https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/08/40279896/spacex-presiden...
- Tuna-Fish 5mo ago
- childintime 5mo agoThese datacenters in space will become space junk. Doesn't seem to be sustainable. With a million of these it's hard to imagine why this would be a good idea, and it starts looking like insanity.
- kortilla 5mo agoNope, they will be in a low earth orbit that will decay and enter the atmosphere without maintenance burns
- JPLeRouzic 5mo agoAnd it will impact negatively humanity's health. https://engineerine.com/starlink-satellites-harming-human/ https://engineerine.com/starlink-satellites-harming-human/
- xiphias2 5mo agoNot really, if you look at the plans, only a few hundred thousand satellites were planned in LEO, and millions over the Chinese satellites. There will be a collision at some point, there's no real-time communication between USA and China satellite launches.
- childintime 5mo agoThey'll all have a sun synchronous polar orbit.. I don't think they'll be very low orbit, unless they are like trains, at every 1km a satellite.
- 5mo ago
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoHe again mentions data center in space. He has to be the biggest richest idiot on the planet. It should be a lot cheaper to just buy massive solar (wait, couldn't he just make them himself with his tesla roofs?) and batteries (which Tesla also makes) and put Datacenter in some dessert and put fiber to that place... But it seems he needs some angle to push all this necessary investment into something? Are we now in the phase of 'lets play scifi' just because we can't come up with anything else? Btw. Starlink is already 'cheap', with only 8-10 Million customers and doesn't scale easily. So that will not just be able to keep up with his mars stuff...
- sschueller 5mo agoNobody seem to care about reality anymore or facts. You may as well put a data center at the bottom of the ocean which would be way easier but no one is doing that either. In the end in like 10-15 years when others land on the moon and build amazing new things maybe just maybe there will be a realization that playing scifi doesn't produce results.
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoMicrosoft did that already and they canceled this 'idea' because it was too hard to maintain that setup XD
- kbelder 5mo agoThey tested it and decided against it because the economics didn't work out. That's how things are supposed to go. Data centers in space will work out or not. They have some engineering hurdles to get over and some bigger economic hurdles. If they succeed, great! If not, we've learned, and can turn to the next idea. We don't need to proclaim them a success or a failure yet. I don't think they'll be sensible economically for at least several decades, but I welcome the research.
- u8080 5mo agoData centers in space make sense if it is military AI controlling drone swarms over Starlink during global conflict.
- AntiUSAbah 5mo ago[flagged]
- croix 5mo agoArchitecture in 68K. ROM. VII Design. Complex machines. [1]: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/neuromancer-count-zero-mona-lisa-overdrive https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/neuromancer-count-zero-mona...
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoWhy was this flagged? Its clearly stating real numbers and I do make a clear point: Space is a 700 Billion dollar business split between building the stuff you want to send up, the 'sending up' part, and the operations part. Space-X 'magic' evaluation is between 800 Billion and 2 Trillion. snicker And this doesn't even calculate in, that if Space would really become interesting and profitable as another big disruptive market, everyone else will join. Or lets say they are joining already anyway.
- myrmidon 5mo agoFor reference: Starlink is <$20bn yearly revenue (a bit over $1k/customer). Unless it manages to massively eat into mobile network market share (pretty unlikely in my view) growing past $100bn (yearly revenue) or so seems unrealistic to me. Even with cheaper launch costs, it is not clear to me that Starlink would ever be interested in offering service for like $80/year (=> price competitive with mobile carriers in low income nations).
- nomel 5mo ago> Unless it manages to massively eat into mobile network market share Several mobile carriers are already using them for backend of remote towers.
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoFor something relevant? Why would they do this? Dark fibers is an easy thing and you need to put power to these remote towers anyway.
- nomel 5mo agoYou need a cell tower every 20 miles or so, less for a performant one. There's not dark fiber at that density in remote regions (remote is, by definition, lacking infrastructure). There's a better chance of power, and for the cases there's not, solar/battery is fine for a cell tower, especially one designed for lower power remote installations.
- senordevnyc 5mo agoPrediction: SpaceX will launch a handful of GPU-equipped satellites. Maybe they’ll even include some token GPUs on each Starlink satellite so they can throw out some bullshit stats about the vast size of their AI supercluster in space, etc. They’ll be vague about capacity for a few years, and they’ll be building and acquiring data centers on earth “just while we wait for <breakthrough> that will unlock overnight massive scaling of the space data centers”. The timeline will always be “in the next year”, but no real workloads will run on the space GPUs for a decade. Then, finally, maybe, it’ll happen. Or maybe not, just like FSD. Always around the corner, never quite here. And it’ll work for meme stock purposes, just like his other companies.
- testing22321 5mo ago> just like FSD Obviously it’s very late, but Tesla now have vehicles in multiple YS cities taxing people with nobody in the front seats. It’s coming.
- senordevnyc 5mo agoYeah, right. Why do they only have a handful of these cars in each city, when supposedly wait times are super high for them? Why don't they just put more of these in service, if they're just Teslas? I suspect the answer is because they're being remotely monitored and operated 24/7, and they don't have the staff to tend to them. But only Tesla knows, and they've spent the last few years absolutely destroying their reputation. They lie constantly, they show flagrant disregard for the lives of their customers, and I trust nothing that they say. EDIT: lol, looks like I was exactly right. These fucking clowns: https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-says-its-robotaxis-are-sometimes-driven-by-humans/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-says-its-robotaxis-are-som...
- testing22321 5mo agoWell, yes, exactly. They’re doing a cautious roll out. If they didn’t you’d be canning them, and you’re canning them anyway. It feels awfully like you don’t want them trying to roll out new tech at all. Funny take for someone on hacker news to have.
- zhouquanxi 5mo ago[flagged]