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Honestly, I think he's spot on, and I normally am not fond of Elon's public behavior. I mentioned in another thread that they're getting around having to ask p

Honestly, I think he's spot on, and I normally am not fond of Elon's public behavior. I mentioned in another thread that they're getting around having to ask permission to build datacenters by doing it in space. The entire thing is to avoid NIMBY stuff I'd bet.

MattDamonSpace 5mo ago
It really depends on scale. There will be enough terrestrial vetoes that if what we build is 10-1000x what people are already halting through legal challenges…
- piloto_ciego 5mo ago
  I doubt it. Like, I hate to have to be the bearer of bad news, and maybe it’s my weird arctic anarchist soul, but, the old world order, the need for these companies to follow rules at least in spirit? That’s dead now. There are no laws but the laws of physics and the the laws others force your organization to follow. I recognize that that is distressing to people, hell, it’s been obvious to me since I was at OWS in my 20s. But we are in a new world now and the old rules don’t apply. A company that has the backing of the government to launch their spacecraft will simply do it. You think Texas is going to stop them? Or Florida? Or even California? Of course not. A lot changes in a world where you can plan things out with AI. A lot changes in a world with abundance. If we play our cards right we could have the culture, but that means letting go of the conservative yearning to put things back to how they were. The old world is 10 light years away now, it wasn’t as great as we remember it and it ain’t coming back. And if I had to choose, I’d much rather have datacenters in orbit than one burning hydrocarbons loudly 2 blocks from my kids’ school.
  - Dylan16807 5mo ago
    > And if I had to choose, I’d much rather have datacenters in orbit than one burning hydrocarbons loudly 2 blocks from my kids’ school. Yeah, but that choice is nonsense. Mandate that datacenters on the ground are on 100% green power and quiet, and they'll still be way way more cost effective than the orbital option.
    - piloto_ciego 5mo ago
      You don’t get it. Sorry, this is an “is-ought” thing. Sure we could mandate this. But are we going to? Do the systems exist that would actually mandate this? Looking at things right now? I would say no. We will see, maybe in up my own ass on this, but I see a pretty big set of changes coming down the pike. Adapt or die (as unpalatable as that may seem).
      - Dylan16807 5mo ago
        If you don't mandate anything, then they're going to build the dirty one. So what kind of laws would lead to the orbital option being preferred over the ground-based clean option?
        piloto_ciego 5mo ago
        Well, arguably from the get go an orbital datacenter would be better. If launch costs were low enough I would say that as much industry as possible should be moved off planet, and we should make earth into a garden?
        Dylan16807 5mo ago
        We're still doing all the mining and manufacturing on Earth, and there's so much empty land. The final product of self-powered datacenter is among the lowest priority of things to get away from us, and not an effective place to spend environmental mitigation money. And then when they re-enter they pollute pretty badly.
        piloto_ciego 5mo ago
        Ok, this is not a reasoned argument anymore is it?
        Dylan16807 5mo ago
        What do you think isn't reasoned? You came up with an extremely arbitrary choice. I pointed out that if you were in a position to make that choice, you have much better options somewhere in between. Then you talked about the more general idea of moving all industry off the planet, and sure that's nice but this is not the industry you want to start with, it should be one of the last ones you worry about. If someone's offering to build space datacenters for free, probably go ahead and take them up on the offer. But if you have any influence on the decisionmaking, don't push for space datacenters, just push for non-polluting datacenters. You'll get better results for cheaper.
  - runako 5mo ago
    > the old world order, the need for these companies to follow rules at least in spirit? That’s dead now Pendulums swing. Anyone advocating for the development of more advanced technologies should be in favor of a system of fair laws enforced robustly. One need only look to countries that lack this foundation to understand why.
    - piloto_ciego 5mo ago
      Not arguing that this is “good” rather that this is the way things are now.
    - laughing_man 5mo ago
      The history of international oil companies is instructive here. It takes many billions to build out oil infrastructure, and they're always one election/revolution away from losing it all.
lucisferre 5mo ago
How do you cool them? https://www.chaotropy.com/why-jeff-bezos-is-probably-wrong-predicting-ai-data-centers-in-space/ https://www.chaotropy.com/why-jeff-bezos-is-probably-wrong-p...
- YZF 5mo ago
  https://youtu.be/FlQYU3m1e80 https://youtu.be/FlQYU3m1e80 "Is It Really Impossible To Cool A Datacenter In Space?" - Scott Manley tl;dr -> not impossible.
  - laughing_man 5mo ago
    Yeah, that was kind of a surprise. I always thought heat would be the big show stopper, but apparently not.
- piloto_ciego 5mo ago
  Admittedly it is not my field, but back of the envelope calculations in a sun synchronous orbit with the radiators pointed towards deep space seem pretty plausible with about 1.3 to 1.7 ratio of solar area to radiator area. Like, it's not "great" but if you're not flying around the sun every 72 minutes or whatever and you can keep your panels sun on and radiate into deep space, the numbers aren't bananas.
  - Tostino 5mo ago
    But you need a lot of fluid or gas to move the heat in that radiator system, whereas solar has the benefit of extremely efficiently moving power around at great distances through wiring or integrated bus bars. And you need to get the heat away from the central point to the extremities of the radiator as much as possible. So you can maximize how much energy can be radiated away. Seems like the weight of the system would be an issue with whatever gas or liquid you used to fill those radiators, but maybe I'm wrong...
    - piloto_ciego 5mo ago
idiotsecant 5mo ago
Building datacenters in a medium where the main waste product (heat) is incredibly difficult to get rid of, there is zero opportunity for maintainance, and the fuel to get to site costs more than the site does. Makes perfect sense, spot on!
- ericd 5mo ago
  Does the fuel cost that much? Just doing some back of the napkin doesn't seem to bear that out. Looks like the fuel load is about $2M, and gets you 100 tons to orbit. I think an inference-optimized NVL72 GB300 rack costs around 3x that, >$6M. That thing eats about 150kw, call it 10 pallets of 30 500W solar panels. Each pallet's about a ton, and costs about $10k. Let's be conservative and say the radiator's about the same weight. In reality, they're not going to be using commercial panels with heavy glass facing designed to resist hail, so should be better than this. But anyway, conservatively, about 20 tons each, it seems like you could fit at least 5 of these per starship, assuming it's weight and not volume limited. Doesn't seem like fuel's a prohibitive portion of the cost here. But if they can't get it to their no-refurb-between-launches target, then that might be a significant part of the cost.
ActorNightly 5mo ago
The model 3 was Elons last great idea (if it was even his). Since then, he has been wrong pretty much about everything. Its to the point where anything he says is guaranteed to be wrong just on the merit that its coming out of his mouth.
- vanviegen 5mo ago
  Starlink?
  - ActorNightly 5mo ago
    Starlink wasn't technically Musks, Space X acquired a few companies IIRC. It also was developed around 2016, before Musk went crazy.
    - bvcp 5mo ago
      at the very least hes a great capital allocator
Dylan16807 5mo ago
You can build a completely self-powered (and water-free) datacenter in the middle of nowhere for far cheaper than the satellite version. The NIMBY factor isn't so powerful as to keep datacenters off entire continents. Going to space for that is very stupid.
- piloto_ciego 5mo ago
  You still have to ask someone permission on the ground. It’s not about the money.
  - Dylan16807 5mo ago
    Yes, someone. Just a couple have to say yes out of so so many municipalities. So I'll just say the same sentence again. The NIMBY factor isn't so powerful as to keep datacenters off entire continents.
- bvcp 5mo ago
  now scale it ti 1 terrawatt
  - Dylan16807 5mo ago
    Sure. The satellite way: we launch a hundred million big satellites (or fewer even bigger satellites). The land way: we cover 15000 square kilometers of the sahara desert in solar panels, or half-cover 30000, either way that's less than a percent of it. And some of the corners of the solar fields get turned into actual datacenter. They both sound very hard but I don't see any notable reason to favor the first one.
    - bvcp 5mo ago
      and when the sun goes out?
      - Dylan16807 5mo ago
kelnos 5mo ago
It would be orders of magnitude cheaper to buy up islands and space in countries that don't care, and then find ways to connect them to the required infrastructure, than it would be to build them in space. Hell, it would be cheaper to figure out how to build them on the ocean.
- inglor_cz 5mo ago
  I think Prospera and its kerfuffles with Honduras put a definitive end to the "islands" idea. Governments can change and the next one may be very unfriendly. "Rich gringos/infidels/colonizers are abusing our land sold for sordid money" is a very efficient populist call almost everywhere on the planet.

MattDamonSpace 5mo ago

It really depends on scale. There will be enough terrestrial vetoes that if what we build is 10-1000x what people are already halting through legal challenges…

piloto_ciego 5mo ago
I doubt it. Like, I hate to have to be the bearer of bad news, and maybe it’s my weird arctic anarchist soul, but, the old world order, the need for these companies to follow rules at least in spirit? That’s dead now. There are no laws but the laws of physics and the the laws others force your organization to follow. I recognize that that is distressing to people, hell, it’s been obvious to me since I was at OWS in my 20s. But we are in a new world now and the old rules don’t apply. A company that has the backing of the government to launch their spacecraft will simply do it. You think Texas is going to stop them? Or Florida? Or even California? Of course not. A lot changes in a world where you can plan things out with AI. A lot changes in a world with abundance. If we play our cards right we could have the culture, but that means letting go of the conservative yearning to put things back to how they were. The old world is 10 light years away now, it wasn’t as great as we remember it and it ain’t coming back. And if I had to choose, I’d much rather have datacenters in orbit than one burning hydrocarbons loudly 2 blocks from my kids’ school.
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  > And if I had to choose, I’d much rather have datacenters in orbit than one burning hydrocarbons loudly 2 blocks from my kids’ school. Yeah, but that choice is nonsense. Mandate that datacenters on the ground are on 100% green power and quiet, and they'll still be way way more cost effective than the orbital option.
  - piloto_ciego 5mo ago
    You don’t get it. Sorry, this is an “is-ought” thing. Sure we could mandate this. But are we going to? Do the systems exist that would actually mandate this? Looking at things right now? I would say no. We will see, maybe in up my own ass on this, but I see a pretty big set of changes coming down the pike. Adapt or die (as unpalatable as that may seem).
    - Dylan16807 5mo ago
      If you don't mandate anything, then they're going to build the dirty one. So what kind of laws would lead to the orbital option being preferred over the ground-based clean option?
      - piloto_ciego 5mo ago
        Well, arguably from the get go an orbital datacenter would be better. If launch costs were low enough I would say that as much industry as possible should be moved off planet, and we should make earth into a garden?
        Dylan16807 5mo ago
        We're still doing all the mining and manufacturing on Earth, and there's so much empty land. The final product of self-powered datacenter is among the lowest priority of things to get away from us, and not an effective place to spend environmental mitigation money. And then when they re-enter they pollute pretty badly.
        piloto_ciego 5mo ago
        Ok, this is not a reasoned argument anymore is it?
        Dylan16807 5mo ago
        What do you think isn't reasoned? You came up with an extremely arbitrary choice. I pointed out that if you were in a position to make that choice, you have much better options somewhere in between. Then you talked about the more general idea of moving all industry off the planet, and sure that's nice but this is not the industry you want to start with, it should be one of the last ones you worry about. If someone's offering to build space datacenters for free, probably go ahead and take them up on the offer. But if you have any influence on the decisionmaking, don't push for space datacenters, just push for non-polluting datacenters. You'll get better results for cheaper.
- runako 5mo ago
  > the old world order, the need for these companies to follow rules at least in spirit? That’s dead now Pendulums swing. Anyone advocating for the development of more advanced technologies should be in favor of a system of fair laws enforced robustly. One need only look to countries that lack this foundation to understand why.
  - piloto_ciego 5mo ago
    Not arguing that this is “good” rather that this is the way things are now.
  - laughing_man 5mo ago
    The history of international oil companies is instructive here. It takes many billions to build out oil infrastructure, and they're always one election/revolution away from losing it all.

lucisferre 5mo ago

How do you cool them? https://www.chaotropy.com/why-jeff-bezos-is-probably-wrong-predicting-ai-data-centers-in-space/ https://www.chaotropy.com/why-jeff-bezos-is-probably-wrong-p...

YZF 5mo ago
https://youtu.be/FlQYU3m1e80 https://youtu.be/FlQYU3m1e80 "Is It Really Impossible To Cool A Datacenter In Space?" - Scott Manley tl;dr -> not impossible.
- laughing_man 5mo ago
  Yeah, that was kind of a surprise. I always thought heat would be the big show stopper, but apparently not.
piloto_ciego 5mo ago
Admittedly it is not my field, but back of the envelope calculations in a sun synchronous orbit with the radiators pointed towards deep space seem pretty plausible with about 1.3 to 1.7 ratio of solar area to radiator area. Like, it's not "great" but if you're not flying around the sun every 72 minutes or whatever and you can keep your panels sun on and radiate into deep space, the numbers aren't bananas.
- Tostino 5mo ago
  But you need a lot of fluid or gas to move the heat in that radiator system, whereas solar has the benefit of extremely efficiently moving power around at great distances through wiring or integrated bus bars. And you need to get the heat away from the central point to the extremities of the radiator as much as possible. So you can maximize how much energy can be radiated away. Seems like the weight of the system would be an issue with whatever gas or liquid you used to fill those radiators, but maybe I'm wrong...
  - piloto_ciego 5mo ago

idiotsecant 5mo ago

Building datacenters in a medium where the main waste product (heat) is incredibly difficult to get rid of, there is zero opportunity for maintainance, and the fuel to get to site costs more than the site does. Makes perfect sense, spot on!

ericd 5mo ago
Does the fuel cost that much? Just doing some back of the napkin doesn't seem to bear that out. Looks like the fuel load is about $2M, and gets you 100 tons to orbit. I think an inference-optimized NVL72 GB300 rack costs around 3x that, >$6M. That thing eats about 150kw, call it 10 pallets of 30 500W solar panels. Each pallet's about a ton, and costs about $10k. Let's be conservative and say the radiator's about the same weight. In reality, they're not going to be using commercial panels with heavy glass facing designed to resist hail, so should be better than this. But anyway, conservatively, about 20 tons each, it seems like you could fit at least 5 of these per starship, assuming it's weight and not volume limited. Doesn't seem like fuel's a prohibitive portion of the cost here. But if they can't get it to their no-refurb-between-launches target, then that might be a significant part of the cost.

ActorNightly 5mo ago

The model 3 was Elons last great idea (if it was even his). Since then, he has been wrong pretty much about everything. Its to the point where anything he says is guaranteed to be wrong just on the merit that its coming out of his mouth.

vanviegen 5mo ago
Starlink?
- ActorNightly 5mo ago
  Starlink wasn't technically Musks, Space X acquired a few companies IIRC. It also was developed around 2016, before Musk went crazy.
  - bvcp 5mo ago
    at the very least hes a great capital allocator

Dylan16807 5mo ago

You can build a completely self-powered (and water-free) datacenter in the middle of nowhere for far cheaper than the satellite version. The NIMBY factor isn't so powerful as to keep datacenters off entire continents. Going to space for that is very stupid.

piloto_ciego 5mo ago
You still have to ask someone permission on the ground. It’s not about the money.
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  Yes, someone. Just a couple have to say yes out of so so many municipalities. So I'll just say the same sentence again. The NIMBY factor isn't so powerful as to keep datacenters off entire continents.
bvcp 5mo ago
now scale it ti 1 terrawatt
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  Sure. The satellite way: we launch a hundred million big satellites (or fewer even bigger satellites). The land way: we cover 15000 square kilometers of the sahara desert in solar panels, or half-cover 30000, either way that's less than a percent of it. And some of the corners of the solar fields get turned into actual datacenter. They both sound very hard but I don't see any notable reason to favor the first one.
  - bvcp 5mo ago
    and when the sun goes out?
    - Dylan16807 5mo ago

kelnos 5mo ago

It would be orders of magnitude cheaper to buy up islands and space in countries that don't care, and then find ways to connect them to the required infrastructure, than it would be to build them in space. Hell, it would be cheaper to figure out how to build them on the ocean.

inglor_cz 5mo ago
I think Prospera and its kerfuffles with Honduras put a definitive end to the "islands" idea. Governments can change and the next one may be very unfriendly. "Rich gringos/infidels/colonizers are abusing our land sold for sordid money" is a very efficient populist call almost everywhere on the planet.