Hacker News Reader

Comment by rlt | Hacker News Reader

It was also hard for many people to imagine a reusable booster, a belly flopping Starship, catching the largest booster ever built with “chopsticks”, a 10,000 satellite constellation, etc.

Orbital compute is technically very feasible. We’re not talking about a datacenter-sized structure, but a lot of rack-sized satellites connected by laser links. SpaceX has gotten pretty good at building, launching, and managing large constellations.

Economically it obviously it has challenges, but there are some advantages (6x solar production, free real estate, less regulation, arguably simpler cooling) to balance the extra costs (launch, radiators, lack of access for maintenance, limited lifespan, etc).

View on HN

>It was also hard for many people to imagine a reusable booster, a belly flopping Starship, catching the largest booster ever built with “chopsticks”, a 10,000 satellite constellation, etc.

I don't actually think this would be hard to imagine. I've been a huge fan of Space X since it's launch exactly because these types of things do seem feasible because they save so much of money if they are achievable.

A moon base with a secondary launch site, yes. Mining asteroids for precious metals, definitely. I'm not some Luddite.

My only point here is that you can build a data center on the ground trivially easily. Any data center that can exist in space could much more easily exist on the ground... where you can update it and fix things that go wrong. The only issue is politics. I'm entirely happy to be wrong here. If someone can explain the thesis, I'd be happy to get on board.

Solar power is already one of the cheaper (and cleaner!) forms of power generation. In dawn dusk sun synchronous orbits where satellites are always fully illuminated the panels will produce around 6 times as much electricity as those on the ground. And you don't need batteries to operate 24/7 (and as a bonus, the satellites will follow the work day demand curve through the day, reducing latency, at least for some people).

A fully reusable Starship will drastically change the economics of both initial launch as well as maintenance. I expect it will become more feasible to send vehicles to refuel/repair/replace components and keep satellites flying longer. Especially for orbital compute where there will be relatively few dense orbital planes. SpaceX showed modular servers in their video https://youtu.be/k3Un1TizSNg?si=14-bjxXkiyM6cxpg&t=36

First off, let’s not pretend rocket launch dependent solar is “cleaner.” Be reasonable. Solar + saline batteries is pretty damn clean.

Yes, I watched the video. It’s talking about solar and radiators. I agree, if we can solve solar and radiators, it’s feasible tech.

I’m still not entirely sure it’ll be competitive with solar data centers on the ground. I realize I’m no expert, but it just seems like a bizarre way to do computing.

Everything I like about Space X is about doing things that you can't do on earth, because you can't do them on earth feasibly.

> Everything I like about Space X is about doing things that you can't do on earth, because you can't do them on earth feasibly.

I agree those kinds of things are more exciting, but the other angle is SpaceX needs an excuse to do lots of Starship launches, just like Starlink has done for Falcon 9. If orbital compute can at a minimum be profitable enough to pay for the launches it will help bring the cost of Starship down and the reliability up, allowing SpaceX to do more with Starship.

(Of course if orbital compute merely breaks even then maybe the current valuation isn’t justified)

> explain the thesis

It's all laid out in this insufferable a16z piece if you can see past the ego-stroking.

https://www.a16z.news/p/spacex-and-the-sentient-sun

> catching the largest booster ever built with “chopsticks”

I've heard this often. It's not what happens. More correct to say that engineers (not Musk) got a booster to land in a pre-specified spot. The "chopsticks" aren't waving around to catch anything flying by. The booster comes to them.

LMAO, ok, how about “precisely landing the largest flying structure ever built such that it could be grabbed by two mechanical arms attached to the launch pad”?

That will make it clear it’s not actually a giant Mechazilla robot reaching out to grab the booster using literal chopsticks where ever it happens to come down.

Perfect!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com