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SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

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Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#71

Post by 7e »

hkpack wrote: post #69
PunchyHamster wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but how's that more financially viable than "build your own solar battery farm to power data center on ground"

Land is expensive, water is scarce, people don’t want sound pollution anywhere near them. Building a datacenter in the neighborhood is already unpopular enough that companies do tricks to prevent public from knowing what is being built and by whom in advance. Sending a small box with a panel to space may be a solution if a: the inside of the box is expensive and the cost to launch is cheap. You amortize the box over…

In the Sahara there is plenty of space and plenty of solar. Any heat you can radiate away in space, you can radiate away on Earth. Or, more simply, dig into the ground and pump heat into the cool earth.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#72

Post by Zigurd »

timschmidt wrote: post #51
toasty228 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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

They seem to have constructed a rocket that consistently gets heavier and more complex and more expensive and farthrt behind schedule and hasn't demonstrated specified payload.

IOW it ain't better than falcon heavy.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#73

Post by hkpack »

7e wrote: post #71
hkpack wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land is expensive, water is scarce, people don’t want sound pollution anywhere near them. Building a datacenter in the neighborhood is already unpopular enough that companies do tricks to prevent public from knowing what is being built and by whom in advance. Sending a small box with a panel to space may be a solution if a: the inside of the box is expensive and the cost to launch is cheap. You amortize the box over…

In the Sahara there is plenty of space and plenty of solar. Any heat you can radiate away in space, you can radiate away on Earth. Or, more simply, dig into the ground and pump heat into the cool earth.

I wish you good luck in building a datacenter in the middle of Sahara.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#74

Post by Zigurd »

toasty228 wrote: post #55
ReptileMan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It won't be possible to keep the solar panels in full sunlight 100% of the time, so you need batteries too.

The math don't math. Too many young dudes watched too much space opera with big heavy armored spaceships that rumble when they fly. Real space is lightweight and fragile. We don't make data centers out of that stuff.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#76

Post by dzhiurgis »

Zigurd wrote: post #70
tristanj wrote: post #13

Starlink has been so successful, it is facing a lot of competition in the next few years. Every major power wants their own, national starlink network. China's state-backed starlink competitor GuoWang is putting 13,000 satellites in orbit by 2030. They've already started launching satellites. China's Qianfan plans 15,000 satellites by 2030. AST SpaceMobile is building their own network. Amazon Leo plans for 3,000 sat…

Circa 2032: "Remember when everybody was going to launch constellations of thousands of satellites?" "Yeah, just like the data centers, only about 10% of that got built."

Sovereign ones are definitely going to happen. Direct to cell 5G (aka global IMSI catcher) and SAR decoy is just too good to pass up.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#78

Post by dzhiurgis »

variety8675 wrote: post #27

> Most people likely don’t think about how often they use satellite communications. But that Instagram post you made? You used a satellite. This article seems to confuse Starlink with ordinary cellular communications

Facebook Messenger already works with Starlink - https://one.nz/faq/one-nz-satellite-frequently-asked-questio... so Instagram is probably not far off.

Edit: wow even apple music is included in this.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#79

Post by dzhiurgis »

ben_w wrote: post #58
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 co…

787 is vastly more expensive than Starship, but Starship uses 7x more fuel to get to orbit than a typical 787 flight. _IF_ Starship can achieve same re-usability as 787, then cost to orbit will be like $7.5/kg.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

#80

Post by dzhiurgis »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #65
ben_w wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Yeah but how's that more financially viable than "build your own solar battery farm to power data center on ground"

Solar capacity factor is 10-20%. So your state of the art chips are utilized 10-20%. That just makes no sense. Adding batteries help, but does not solve it entirely.
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