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Starship V3

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Re: Starship V3

#321

Post by pveierland »

notahacker wrote: post #312
pveierland wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As problems go, radiation and cooling seem to have relatively low dimensionality compared to the other problems. It seems to be mostly a question of optimizing within the dimensions of dissipation / structure / deployment / service / cost / weight. When all is said and done, the cooling solution will end up being a module that can deal with some power dissipation, cost X amount, weight Y amount, have structural inter…

Radiators are raised because it's a known constraint and we know that Stefan Boltzmann implies a lot of radiator mass to be launched even at 100% cooling efficiency and there are also theoretical limits to launch efficiency which Starship is rapidly approaching. Nobody is saying orbital datacentres can't be cooled, they're saying people arguing launching the mass of the required radiators into space is a better, more…

I read the comment that I replied to as these challenges being a large prohibitor to this development, and I pointed out that these seem like challenges that can be dealt with mostly in isolation from other challenges and in particular not require a large number of engineers to deal with.

Of course the major exercise becomes about total cost efficiency, but I think a large attraction is that once you've solved space deployment sufficiently, you don't need to keep dealing with local circumstances and power production adaptations to every new site you're dealing with on Earth, as it's more about producing a set of modules you can keep launching without individual adaptation - not about "space being cold".

Re: Starship V3

#322

Post by lukan »

svantana wrote: post #316
AntiUSAbah wrote: post #294

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…

I dunno if it's that clear cut. In space with a shadowless orbit you get 5x more solar energy per day than the sunniest place on earth. And it's always on, so you don't need batteries. Also, the lack of gravity and weather means that the structures can be a lot more brittle - I imagine something like a gpu on the back of a large thin film solar panel, where the panel also acts as heatsink. Could be pretty cheap!

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons?

Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.

Re: Starship V3

#323

Post by sschueller »

svantana wrote: post #316
AntiUSAbah wrote: post #294

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…

I dunno if it's that clear cut. In space with a shadowless orbit you get 5x more solar energy per day than the sunniest place on earth. And it's always on, so you don't need batteries. Also, the lack of gravity and weather means that the structures can be a lot more brittle - I imagine something like a gpu on the back of a large thin film solar panel, where the panel also acts as heatsink. Could be pretty cheap!

You can only cool by radiation in space. You may get more energy from the sun but how are you going to get rid of all the heat fast enough?

Re: Starship V3

#324

Post by svantana »

lukan wrote: post #322
svantana wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if it's that clear cut. In space with a shadowless orbit you get 5x more solar energy per day than the sunniest place on earth. And it's always on, so you don't need batteries. Also, the lack of gravity and weather means that the structures can be a lot more brittle - I imagine something like a gpu on the back of a large thin film solar panel, where the panel also acts as heatsink. Could be pretty cheap!

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.

The joint solar panel + computer system will be pretty close to an ideal black body, which near earth will have an average temperature of about 10°C. And radiation is an issue, but starlink seems to work so I don't see why this wouldn't.

Re: Starship V3

#325

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

Compute in space is doable, we already send plenty of computers up there, technologically, it is not even a challenge. It just doesn't make sense economically, even with Starship, it is making things harder for no good reason.

Starlink is different, it makes sense. Covering the entire Earth, including the oceans with cell towers for global internet connectivity is harder than having a satellite constellation. The opposite situation from datacenters.

Re: Starship V3

#326

Post by svantana »

sschueller wrote: post #323
svantana wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if it's that clear cut. In space with a shadowless orbit you get 5x more solar energy per day than the sunniest place on earth. And it's always on, so you don't need batteries. Also, the lack of gravity and weather means that the structures can be a lot more brittle - I imagine something like a gpu on the back of a large thin film solar panel, where the panel also acts as heatsink. Could be pretty cheap!

You can only cool by radiation in space. You may get more energy from the sun but how are you going to get rid of all the heat fast enough?

How hot do you think black objects in space get? Something like 10°C. Look up thermal equilibrium of an ideal black body.

Re: Starship V3

#327

Post by squidbeak »

dopa42365 wrote: post #155
legitster wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the underrated topics about space right now is the potential supply of rockets outstrips demand by a lot. We're simply out things we can profitably send to space so SpaceX and others are trying to come up with ideas to induce demand. My understanding is that Starlink mostly grew out of the same need to justify scaling up rocket production.

Before LEO internet constellations, even the leading nations had just ~20-25 launches per year each, and a good chunk of those were for ISS services. Other than the occasional GNSS, weather, scientific, broadcast and surveillance satellite, there's not all that much worth sending into space.

This really isn't true. Infrastructure build outs, space mining, the power generators and datacenters needed by the world's current best funded and most energetic sector all depend on more launches and larger cargo holds.

Re: Starship V3

#328

Post by lukan »

svantana wrote: post #324
lukan wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.

The joint solar panel + computer system will be pretty close to an ideal black body, which near earth will have an average temperature of about 10°C. And radiation is an issue, but starlink seems to work so I don't see why this wouldn't.

Starlink does not need so much energy as a datacenter.

Re: Starship V3

#329

Post by AntiUSAbah »

squidbeak wrote: post #320
AntiUSAbah wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just go to Google Maps. Just do it. Type in Arizona, or new mexico, texas whatever. Do you see all this brownish stuff? Yeah thats just empty land with A LOT of solar. So in the long term, what do you think is cheaper and easier to maintain, upgrade, handle etc.? A Space operation on which you need to send compute hardware constantly upwoards or a fiber connection to some more 'remote/dessert' like area which has a l…

> Just go to Google Maps. Just do it. Type in Arizona, or new mexico, texas whatever. Do you see all this brownish stuff? Yeah thats just empty land with A LOT of solar. 'Brownish stuff', known more generally as natural ecosystems. > So in the long term, what do you think is cheaper and easier to maintain, upgrade, handle etc.? How long a term does your imagination stretch to? Are you really arguing that once provisi…

Whats your critisism with 'brownish stuff'? That space is free? Space doesn't disrupt anything?

Like sending up a lot of satelites doesn't hurt/poisens our atmosphere? That space debris doesn't matter? Disruption to astrophotography doesn't matter? Building a spaceship, the fuel for it and everything is ecofriendly?

But the natural ecosystem thats your issue?

Its 2026. This google maps brown areas are VERY VERY BIG. I would say we have enough space on our planet for a few hundred more years. Especially as we as a society are struggling anyway to expand as we are not even remotely able or capable of educating and handling enough people properly anyway.

'once provisioning' -> Until then lets provision on earth

cooling -> yeah lets just leverage the heat produced by these data centers as an affordable distant heating for housing first? What do you think how much people would enjoy a DC close by if they would get very cheap heating?

automated scaling in space -> how about we start automating earth?

off-planet mining -> you watched to much scifi at this point. Do you even understand how big the machines on earth are for mining? How much we have to transport them away? If you mine anything with a little bit of gravity, the more you mine, the more energy you need to move it around.

Do you even know how to refine minerals in space?

Yeah i think 'shitting' on our planet will be the most maintanbale and cheapest option as long as Musk is alive. Easily.

Re: Starship V3

#330

Post by philipallstar »

notahacker wrote: post #297
philipallstar wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All share price fundamentals are based on the long term. Short term trading is why some shares are very briefly high or low.

All share price fundamentals based on the long term have this pesky thing called discount rate which means your [hypothetical] earnings from something expected to happen in 2050 get weighted a lot lower than your 2028 earnings and your 2100 earnings barely figure in it at all though. That's the case on a pure "I could invest my money in something that makes a bigger profit now, and use that money to buy shares in the…

I doubt anyone is doing earnings analysis 75 years out. It'll be "this is our best guess of the size of the market over time, and here's what percentage of the market SpaceX will get, factoring in the US taxpayer being a large funder of space and preferring a local company."

The large variance is in the projected market size, but I can see why people might be optimistic. Especially given SpaceX's success in Falcon 9 launches, gradually stealing stats away from the record-holders, who have been mostly Russia/USSR-based[0].

[0] https://spacestatsonline.com/rockets/most-launched-rockets

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