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Starship V3

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301–310 of 667 posts

Re: Starship V3

#301

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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…

Chipping in here. There's a lot of speculation on this subject matter, all of which entirely wrong.

Technical concerns aside, the main risk is financial. Success is based on the premise that we need this enough that the costs are justified but the costs are going to be much higher. That is totally unproven on any financial modelling scenario I've seen. In fact there's likely no actual ROI on what has been spent so far and no qualification of demand. With geopolitical problems on the table, no one is going to fund this.

The idea is completely dead before the first node leaves the planet.

Re: Starship V3

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere. None of those are self sustaining.

America still isn’t self sustaining and it’s been hundreds of years.

And the planet is dying

Re: Starship V3

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Local, state and international governments who wanted to crack down on AI could just arrest and execute the owners. None of whom plan on living in space anytime soon.

Re: Starship V3

#305

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Solar panels in space are 5 time more expensive to build than on earth (not talking into account launching them to space), while being 5 to 10 time more efficient. They also degrade 5 to 10 time faster, not accounting for solar flares. Deorbiting solar panels (and satellites) is also a huge environmental issue, as I dislike heavy metal in my food (and you should too). It isn't a real issue yet because we didn't send enough up there for the quantities to be an issue, but idiots seems persuaded we should increase the quantity of heavy metal sent in orbit without fixing this issue first.

Re: Starship V3

#306
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is irrelevant because offensive launches can destroy many orders of magnitude more launches worth of payloads. Even with simple kinetic means. Though these days I think I'd expect to see directed energy weapons adding even more zeros to that.

Have you done the math? "Many orders of magnitude" means, IMHO, at least three. A regular Falcon 9 carries 60 Starlinks IIRC, so three orders of magnitude means destroying 60 thousand at once. What is the offensive launch that can destroy 60 000 satellites in one mission? I don't think it exists.

No idea about 60,000, but it's not impossible to make whole orbits unusable by launching piles of small junk.

Its will ruin it for everyone, but Russia or China is certainly able to do that.

Re: Starship V3

#307
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is irrelevant because offensive launches can destroy many orders of magnitude more launches worth of payloads. Even with simple kinetic means. Though these days I think I'd expect to see directed energy weapons adding even more zeros to that.

Have you done the math? "Many orders of magnitude" means, IMHO, at least three. A regular Falcon 9 carries 60 Starlinks IIRC, so three orders of magnitude means destroying 60 thousand at once. What is the offensive launch that can destroy 60 000 satellites in one mission? I don't think it exists.

An EMP from a high altitude nuclear detonation would do the trick.

Re: Starship V3

#309

These datacenters in space will become space junk. Doesn't seem to be sustainable. With a million of these it's hard to imagine why this would be a good idea, and it starts looking like insanity.

Nope, they will be in a low earth orbit that will decay and enter the atmosphere without maintenance burns

And it will impact negatively humanity's health.

https://engineerine.com/starlink-satellites-harming-human/

Re: Starship V3

#310

He again mentions data center in space. He has to be the biggest richest idiot on the planet. It should be a lot cheaper to just buy massive solar (wait, couldn't he just make them himself with his tesla roofs?) and batteries (which Tesla also makes) and put Datacenter in some dessert and put fiber to that place... But it seems he needs some angle to push all this necessary investment into something? Are we now in th…

Nobody seem to care about reality anymore or facts. You may as well put a data center at the bottom of the ocean which would be way easier but no one is doing that either.

In the end in like 10-15 years when others land on the moon and build amazing new things maybe just maybe there will be a realization that playing scifi doesn't produce results.

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