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Starship V3

spacex.com

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Re: Starship V3

#221

Post by Dylan16807 »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #216
Dylan16807 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You still have to ask someone permission on the ground. It’s not about the money.

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.

Re: Starship V3

#222

Post by archagon »

a34729t wrote: post #211
sixothree wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flag has been coopted as a symbol of right wing nationalist politics. It's the easiest way to identify the right - their very strange love of the flag.

One of the dumbest things ever was the left giving up on the flag. The only way this makes sense is if much of the left actively disdain most of the nation (ie Stanford vocabulary guide around American flag being a triggering symbol or something ridiculous). I dont see how the left and patriotism are incompatible...

The left (or center) did not "give up" on the flag. It's all over the place in protests.

Re: Starship V3

#223

Post by pibaker »

pveierland wrote: post #116
spankalee wrote: post #38

[flagged]

Beyond aggressively optimistic timelines, I find it difficult to disagree with the premise. The aggressively optimistic timelines is also what makes it feasible to even attempt these things, where e.g. the amount of iteration required for Starship would have broken most other companies. > In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. In the long term - all mass and energy available is outside o…

> In the long term

In case anyone is wondering how Tesla’s stock price remain wildly detached from its business reality, keep these four words in mind. If you can convince people that anything about you and your business has to be evaluated on a literally astronomical timescale, you can justify any valuation you desire, because your believers will give you infinite time to realize their investment returns. It has nothing to do with business. They are selling you a vision — which can also come in a pill form, labeled "salvia" and sold at gas stations.

I still see people say the cybertruck is built for mars environments, conveniently ignoring the vast technological and economical barriers stopping us from driving commercially produced vehicles on mars. This space data center thing is the same deal. It doesn't matter how long it will take to solve the technical issues with cooling, radiation, maintenance. It doesn't matter if it will make economical sense or not. It doesn't matter if spacex will be the one to actually do it. You just have to believe, and give them some time — a lot of time, so much time that a monkey can type out Hamlet and type it out again backwards.

See also the buffoonery coming out of Bay Area "effective altruist" and "longtermism" communities.

Re: Starship V3

#224

Post by inglor_cz »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #188
spankalee wrote: post #38

[flagged]

Pretty normal for Elon: big promises, generate interest and funding, then fail to deliver. But by that time, he’s got his trillion-dollar paycheck and is working on his next scheme. We used to eliminate Nazis, not invest in them.

"We used to eliminate Nazis, not invest in them."

US history is more complicated than that, and aside from those four years of hot war, more ambiguous.

Henry Ford was a big Nazi sympathizer, and the Apollo program was led by an actual card-carrying Nazi engineer with a history of overseeing slave labor in a concentration camp.

Which is not meant to defend Nazis, just correct the myth that the US was once somehow morally pure in this regard.

Re: Starship V3

#225

Post by piloto_ciego »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #220
piloto_ciego wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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?

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?

Re: Starship V3

#226

Post by tastyface »

gpt5 wrote: post #27
danpalmer wrote: post #19

[flagged]

Why is everything today has to be "good" or "bad". Where is the nuance? Where is seeing things as they are - an exciting endeavor built by thousands of people, one of them has flaws you don't like. The rise of moralization of everything is really killing online discourse. It's gotten to the point where people will now mostly criticize and support ideas based on who proposed them, and not based on their merits. Tribal…

Well, Musk illegally wrecked half the federal government and killed tens of thousands of Africans in the process. Now he spends his days boosting and funding white nationalists and far-right politicians around the world. Why does everything have to be "good" or "bad"? Because some things are just pure evil and need to be called out as such, as well as thoroughly boycotted if the wheels of justice are too slow to turn.

This is not a nuanced case of "he did a few icky things, but also lots of good things." No. He is a fucked up, deeply racist megalomaniac who is doing his best to reshape the Western world in his fetid image. If he stopped with Tesla and SpaceX, maybe he would be penned differently in the history books, but alas.

Re: Starship V3

#227

Post by overfeed »

eagerpace wrote: post #106
overfeed wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The framing was BS. "I protest being groped without consent by this one guy". "Oh, which other goateed, gold-chain wearing pervert would you rather do it?" "None" is a full, and adequate answer.

We’re talking about rockets, not politics.

I have zero interest in continuing this conversation if you think government spending is not "politics"

Re: Starship V3

#228

Post by pveierland »

pibaker wrote: post #223
pveierland wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond aggressively optimistic timelines, I find it difficult to disagree with the premise. The aggressively optimistic timelines is also what makes it feasible to even attempt these things, where e.g. the amount of iteration required for Starship would have broken most other companies. > In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. In the long term - all mass and energy available is outside o…

> In the long term In case anyone is wondering how Tesla’s stock price remain wildly detached from its business reality, keep these four words in mind. If you can convince people that anything about you and your business has to be evaluated on a literally astronomical timescale, you can justify any valuation you desire, because your believers will give you infinite time to realize their investment returns. It has not…

I fully agree on the reality distortions and valuation chaos surrounding Tesla. This does also follow from the company being very volatile and chaotic, which becomes harder to price. How do you accurately price in e.g. Optimus - it seems really hard to tell at this point - which I guess is also one of the motivators for these strategies.

However, in this particular trajectory, SpaceX did build the rockets and did build Starlink which is now the best global-scale wireless communication network for many use-cases. Stretching this trajectory to scale up the technology to facilitate in-space computing is vastly more grounded than Shakespearean monkeys.

Re: Starship V3

#229

Post by inglor_cz »

Fordec wrote: post #113
neuronexmachina wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm basically assuming that "space-based data centers" are some Glomar Explorer-style cover for something else.

I assume because the Mars goal is as good as dead with what they're finding out about the complexities of building Starship that they can barely get it back down to this planet, never mind back from a second one. This "space datacenters is more important than colonizing the universe" thing is just to deflect from what would be an inevitable failure because if they do this pivot, they can push out the timeline for tha…

"what they're finding out about the complexities of building Starship that they can barely get it back down to this planet, never mind back from a second one."

I would argue that complexities of building Starship are already a solved problem. Boca Chica built a lot more test units than there were (test or production) Apollos and the "factory for rockets, churning them out in regular intervals" part seems to be mastered. They even made three iterations of Raptor, and the third one looks really promising so far.

What is far from perfected is the heat shield and I agree that it is a critical problem.

"it, they can push out the timeline for that further than the original 2026 on Mars goal that they are about to wildly overshoot"

True, but this seems to be ubiquitous in space industry. I am old enough to remember talking about the US going back to the Moon in the 1990s. But the goal, declared by presidents (who have a lot more power at their hands to fulfill it) kept being pushed back and back, always into the next decade, then the next...

If you tolerated it from the government, you should probably tolerate the same from Musk, for the sake of consistency.

Re: Starship V3

#230

Post by inglor_cz »

rasz wrote: post #160
trothamel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's putting AI processing out of the reach of hostile local, state, and international governments. Does it need to be a cover?

>hostile ... international governments you mean other than China, russia, NK and Iran?

Yeah, but any of those attacking US satellites means an apocalyptic war, and the provenance of the attack would be clear. You cannot exactly hide a suborbital rocket launch.

Even in Russian nationalist circles, the occassional idea of shooting down current Starlink satellites is usually met with derision from the rest of the discussion group (see, for example, topwar.ru comments). That is just step too far, too dangerous.

Meanwhile, on Earth, you have a lot of plausible deniability. "Some terrorist group sneaked in and planted a bomb, totally not our people."

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