rlt

Maybe it's not a coincidence an AI company is building this thing...

> every human body is a bit weird and there will almost always be something "wrong" that will be visible in a full body scan

Would this be solved by routine scans, so you have a baseline you can compare against? Ignore anything slightly odd in the first scan but monitor for changes over time?

It's nice when articles lead with culture war handwringing so I know I can ignore the rest of it.

I believe the original commenter meant "The government should not be able to outsource things they are not allowed to do themselves."

> 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)

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

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.

> It offers no real advantages over doing the same thing on Earth

Abundant solar energy, free real estate, less regulation, less backlash from NIMBYs, simpler (yes) cooling.

> Energy is far cheaper and more abundant here than in space.

Huh? The sun is obviously the most abundant source of energy in the solar system.

Satellites in a dusk dawn sun synchronous orbit can be fully illuminated 24/7, so they receive ~6x more solar energy than panels on earth. They also don’t need batteries to operate 24/7, and the panels don’t need glass to deflect hail.

> Heat dissipation

Yes, it will require large radiators. They’re mechanically simpler than terrestrial cooling though.

> Radiation shielding

It turns out generative AI is somewhat uniquely robust to occasional bit flips.

- Either the most complex in-space construction ever undertaken, or the most complex distributed computing problem ever undertaken (no, Starlink satellites aren't good enough, we're orders of magnitude away from replicating the speed and reliability of connections within a single room)

It won’t be a single structure, and will only be used for inference, so latency between satellites/racks doesn’t matter.

- Zero flexibility, zero repairability, zero upgradability. Either it's working, or you make it burn up in the atmosphere with no in-between. Add on that the rationality of sending mountains of precision-manufactured tech containing many uncommon metals only for them to be completely lost. This makes the pricing even worse, in addition to - Already high costs for designing, building and launching all that in addition to all the extra weight overhead you're taking in components that don't do computation, when the alternative is building a glorified warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

I think people vastly underestimate how much a fully reusable Starship will change the economics of space operations.

Not only the initial launch costs, but things like refueling and repairing satellites becomes more economical. I wouldn’t be surprise if SpaceX sends Starships to refuel/maintain satellites to keep them in orbit longer. In fact, SpaceX’s own animation shows modular servers sliding in and out of the satellites.

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).

That’s not how it works. There’s provisions to adjust the targets if there’s M&A.

That logic doesn’t hold.

A and B are X, A is Y, therefore B is Y? Nope.

It seems like the index funds’ problem to solve.

They should just have their own criteria for inclusion in the fund.

He called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, not 401(k)s.

That would be a fine bar if you could ensure your doctors or nearby drivers aren't distracted, stressed, tired, incompetent, or intoxicated.

Steadily starting about 60 days (Q2 earnings) after the IPO.

I think that's the point the parent comment was making.

It’s almost like you can each pick data to fit your narrative.

> But what is being discussed are 100 MW space data centers. Make the calculations....Those need a 20 x 20 mile radiator and a solar farm the same size. Those are space constructions at scifi level maybe for the next century.

No one is talking about building a single massive structure. SpaceX has said they’re targeting 100kW satellites. A lot of them. Which they’re already pretty good at.

Technically it’s pretty straightforward. The only real challenge is making it cheap enough.

Nit: there’s nothing “cryptographic” about reproducible builds.

“Reproducible build” already usually implies bit-by-bit reproducibility.

How much do you hate Elon Musk?

Well, yes, garbage in garbage out. That's a given and not what's meant by "hallucination" in this context.

“expendable upper stage”

So not at all a rival to Starship.

No.

I’m not talking about smart select, but generative AI. It can certainly be used as a tool in art.

Most clip art is actual art like my child’s drawings are “art”.

Most “AI art” is art like “clip art” is art.

This is a phase that will pass.

There will be (and already are) legitimate artists who leverage AI as a creative tool like any other medium/tool (Photoshop, cameras, paint brushes, etc). I respect them even if others immediately dismiss anything AI related.

> I'm not sure what benefit it is for people to point out such mistakes

A feeling of superiority, of course

Hah, I didn't know until just now they weren't part of the design.

> People like to freak out about this, so I wanted to post it here to make sure that everyone who wants to freak out about it gets the opportunity to do so.

I've grown to appreciate unapologetic trolling of people who care way too much about what other people do to themselves or their own private property.

We're talking about SpaceX, not Tesla or xAI, which only very recently joined SpaceX.