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SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

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Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#51

Post by timschmidt »

toasty228 wrote: post #48
timschmidt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has consistently launched ~90% of the mass to orbit for the whole planet Earth over the last several years[1][2]. There's no one else who could more credibly make such a claim. 1: https://officechai.com/stories/spacex-launched-85-of-all-glo... 2: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/spacex-launching-87-90...

They launched a grand total of ~10k starlink satellite, there is a long road between 10k and a million. Musk would be "the most credible" at claiming he'll have 1000 trillion dollar by 2050, it doesn't mean it's credible at all.

They seem to have constructed a rocket with 10x the payload to LEO of the one they used to put those 10k satellites in orbit, and even demonstrated payload deployment. So I'd say 100k looks do-able for them today.

10x that seems aspirational, but not comically so. Folks hate Musk, but that seems to cause them to not see the engineering going on in front of them.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#52

Post by ben_w »

timschmidt wrote: post #44
androiddrew wrote: post #9

Let me fix your title: SpaceX wants investors to think that they will be able to launch millions of satellites.

SpaceX has consistently launched ~90% of the mass to orbit for the whole planet Earth over the last several years[1][2]. There's no one else who could more credibly make such a claim. 1: https://officechai.com/stories/spacex-launched-85-of-all-glo... 2: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/spacex-launching-87-90...

While true, this is insufficient to make the new claim credible. If the proposed satellites only weighed 100kg and remain on orbit for 3 years, to keep a million up requires:

  (150 metric tons/100kg) = 1500 satellites per Starship launch
  1e6/1500 = 666 launches per MTBF (3 years)
  666/(3 years) = 222 Starship launches/year
This is significantly higher than even the current cadence of Falcons.

If the proposed satellites are to be 1 ton, the required launch cadence would be ten times higher.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#53

Post by timschmidt »

ben_w wrote: post #52
timschmidt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has consistently launched ~90% of the mass to orbit for the whole planet Earth over the last several years[1][2]. There's no one else who could more credibly make such a claim. 1: https://officechai.com/stories/spacex-launched-85-of-all-glo... 2: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/spacex-launching-87-90...

While true, this is insufficient to make the new claim credible. If the proposed satellites only weighed 100kg and remain on orbit for 3 years, to keep a million up requires: (150 metric tons/100kg) = 1500 satellites per Starship launch 1e6/1500 = 666 launches per MTBF (3 years) 666/(3 years) = 222 Starship launches/year This is significantly higher than even the current cadence of Falcons. If the proposed satellites…

They've been approved for 44 Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and are aiming for 160 total launches in 2026. They've recently purchased a giant tract of land in Louisana to build a third starport. 222/year is looking doable.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#54

Post by ben_w »

timschmidt wrote: post #53
ben_w wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, this is insufficient to make the new claim credible. If the proposed satellites only weighed 100kg and remain on orbit for 3 years, to keep a million up requires: (150 metric tons/100kg) = 1500 satellites per Starship launch 1e6/1500 = 666 launches per MTBF (3 years) 666/(3 years) = 222 Starship launches/year This is significantly higher than even the current cadence of Falcons. If the proposed satellites…

They've been approved for 44 Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and are aiming for 160 total launches in 2026. They've recently purchased a giant tract of land in Louisana to build a third starport. 222/year is looking doable.

Approval doesn't mean achievable.

At this point, 160 Starship launches in 2026 would be close to every weekday.

They already have three launch sites for Falcon and can't do 200.

(Also see edit, my first post relied on Apple's autocomplete for maths and it used a short ton, plus point about these numbers corresponding to a mere 100 kg per satellite).

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#55

Post by toasty228 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #8
codingdave wrote: post #2

> ... data centres that won’t have an environmental impact here on Earth. Really? I wonder how they are going to get them up there without rocket launches?

100 tons is quite a lot of gpus. If they manage to solve such "minor" problems as powering and cooling them they could run for a decade or so without consuming or polluting. The methane burned to get mass into orbit is trivial - a 500MW powerplant burns that much in under a day.

> 100 tons is quite a lot of gpus

Is it? 100 tons of gb300 rack is ~0.04% of the expected 30GW of new data centers they want to build by 2030... 100 tons of gb300 gives you a measly 10MW data center, it's not even considered a medium sized data center at that point.

Not counting the hundreds of square meters of solar panels and cooling panels you'd need for each rack, you can easily multiply the total weight by 2-5x

They won't run a decade or two either, the failure rate at 3 years is ~50%.

And of course all of that ends up burning down and is completely un recyclable. It just doesn't make any fucking sense no matter how you look at it really.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#57

Post by timschmidt »

ben_w wrote: post #54
timschmidt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been approved for 44 Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and are aiming for 160 total launches in 2026. They've recently purchased a giant tract of land in Louisana to build a third starport. 222/year is looking doable.

Approval doesn't mean achievable. At this point, 160 Starship launches in 2026 would be close to every weekday. They already have three launch sites for Falcon and can't do 200. (Also see edit, my first post relied on Apple's autocomplete for maths and it used a short ton, plus point about these numbers corresponding to a mere 100 kg per satellite).

The 160 launches figure includes falcons. Seems like Starship fuels and flight tests faster than Falcon though. And if they manage to reuse second stages, then that eliminates a significant manufacturing bottleneck.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#58

Post by ben_w »

wrs wrote: post #36

The people who want to put data centers in orbit must be either much smarter than me, or much dumber than me, because I just don't get how that makes any technical or economic sense. Of course, it's possible nobody actually wants to do this, they just want to get funded to do it. (Old joke: "I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant...")

From what I've seen (Google paper, IIRC), it only makes sense economically if Musk's stretch goals for price/kg to orbit for Starship become true.

Technically it's fine, just take something like Starlink and use most of the power for compute rather than for comms.

But financially, it depends on price to orbit being extremely low; not just lower than Falcon, but as low as Musk's best public claims about what may be coming at some point.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#59

Post by ben_w »

timschmidt wrote: post #57
ben_w wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approval doesn't mean achievable. At this point, 160 Starship launches in 2026 would be close to every weekday. They already have three launch sites for Falcon and can't do 200. (Also see edit, my first post relied on Apple's autocomplete for maths and it used a short ton, plus point about these numbers corresponding to a mere 100 kg per satellite).

The 160 launches figure includes falcons. Seems like Starship fuels and flight tests faster than Falcon though. And if they manage to reuse second stages, then that eliminates a significant manufacturing bottleneck.

If you're counting Falcons, you are making my point for me: even with those, on three launch sites, they still can't get close to the minimum for an extremely small, to the point of being unreasonable, target satellite mass.

Further, until they actually do solve upper stage reuse, it is an "if" which can kill the economics of the vehicle itself, let alone reach the eventual potential cost reductions necessary for space based data centres to be worthwhile.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#60

Post by vkou »

ericd wrote: post #33
vkou wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't GPUs the problem is cooling them. Look into what percentage of the ISS by weight is radiators, look into how little power it can generate and radiate, and you'll see that space data centers is the shitcoin pitch of 2026.

ISS is not comparable, we don't have to keep GPUs in human-habitable temp ranges, and radiation speed goes way up with increased temps.

The difference in cooling rate between 290K and 370K isn't as large as you think.
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