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Starship V3

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Re: Starship V3

#381

Post by flohofwoe »

hvb2 wrote: post #203
ActorNightly wrote: post #150

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.

Why on earth (pun intended), would you want that? You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along with what they need. If it is to test an actual community living isolated, sure. But I think it'll always be different because you know that help is at most a few months away and probably a lot less. I don't think you can fake that, unless you're never told you'r…

Are you talking a Mars or Antarctica settlement? ;)

(eg any place on Earth is infinitely better than any place on Mars, maybe a couple of scientists are ready to endure Mars for a couple of months at a time, but beyond that? It will be like living in a labour camp in (frozen) hell.

Re: Starship V3

#382

Post by Tuna-Fish »

arijun wrote: post #270
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #252

Quick update for the folks passionate about space things (since this thread is full of unrelated comments): V3 is their first Starship family big upgrade, containing lots of learnings from previous tests, and the big engine upgrades. V3 engines are the first iteration of a production engine, with lots of sensors and auxiliary systems integrated into the engine itself. Besides the improvements in thrust, they've strea…

> moved a lot of stuff "inside" the engine The level that they managed to fit everything inside of a simple-looking package was so high that the CEO of ULA (the Boeing/Lockheed Martin rocket company) thought they were lying when they first showed pictures [1]. [1] https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/08/40279896/spacex-presiden...

The reason he was so skeptical is that for other engine manufacturers, there are generally different teams working on different parts of the engine, and because Convay's law the final artifact generally ends up looking like the organizational boundaries of the company that made it, with cleanly separated parts for every sub-organization that you can see in the final assembly. One of the things that SpaceX is good at is optimization across these kinds of boundaries, integrating hardware in ways that would be difficult for a more traditional organization.

Re: Starship V3

#383

Post by sschueller »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #371
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…

Elon is smart and employs many smart people. If the thermodynamics didn't work, they would know. I do wonder if shielding the multi-billion transistor GPUs will be a difficult.

Like the hyperloop?...

Re: Starship V3

#384

Post by geertj »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #233

"My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space" Soooo, how much did he put on that outcome on polymarket?

If you mean whether he’s putting his money where his mouth is, he is doing that by risking the future of the company that is his biggest asset on it. It may not be exactly 3 years. But is will very likely happen.

Re: Starship V3

#385

Post by randallsquared »

larusso wrote: post #42
randallsquared wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the tile complexity is worrying. I hope they're able to simplify that or fully streamline the manufacturing and attachment. From the outside, the tiles seem like a Shuttle re-run, and refurbishment of those was one of the long poles in reuse.

But for the shuttle each title was kinda unique and had a specific spot. If they managed to find a shape where you don’t have to mark each tile but can just pull them from a box for replacement is a huge win. Maybe even have some spares and allow them to be replaced during an EVA. This was all not really feasible with the Spaceshuttle.

Indeed! On Starship v1, that's what they started out doing: each tile was the same, and there was awkward placement and notable gaps, especially along the fins. I think they were hoping that this would be good enough, but that dream was dashed. I just hope that it can be completely standardized to provide the benefits you mentioned. I suppose it really helps that they'll be building thousands of these things instead of single digits!

Re: Starship V3

#386

Post by msuniverse2026 »

childintime wrote: post #286

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.

The data centres are for the secret radar constellation masquerading as an ISP company that is Starlink

You are watching the slave grid being erected over your head

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A See 1:38:00

Re: Starship V3

#387

Post by ben_w »

bvcp wrote: post #350
ben_w wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are literally enormous problems powering AI data centers on the Earth right now. Political, not technical. Going to space replaces a domestic problem of angry locals with an international problem of angry governments. > No, we don't have the power on Earth. The power problem isn't meaningfully improved by going to space. For every GW you put in a sun synchronous orbit to get permanent light, you need around 6…

now try to build this infrastructure project and get approvals at all levels of government in a time frame that doesnt see you fall behind

Which needs more government approval, an unprecedented million satellites that impacts every nation, not just America but also several actively hostile to the US, or a very precedented million things with batteries in them (making them grid independent) on very cheap desert land? They don't need to be fixed buildings, they don't need humans inside (would suck if they did given the alternative is putting them in space), they don't need water (ditto), or AC (ditto).

Re: Starship V3

#388

Post by geertj »

elbasti wrote: post #166

Your daily reminder that there is no scenario in which putting data centers in space is easier than putting them in Texas, or Morocco, or literally anywhere else. The only problem that "data centers in space" solves is the problem of trying to scale a rocket company where the potential demand for rocket launches is simply not that big.

The problem putting them in space solves is the approx 5X more solar energy without needing batteries for day and night cycles, along with some smaller wins due to less structural support needed due to microgravity.

Re: Starship V3

#389

Post by YetAnotherNick »

bvcp wrote: post #346
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if solar panel is significantly cheaper and latency doesn't matter you can have servers in any part of the world. Even if they are not up 50% of the time due to limited battery it would still be cheaper.

whose wasting 50% of their silicon production capacity to save on power. doesnt make alot of sense even with money silicon is hard to buy at scale

The thesis of the space datacenter is that energy is the expensive thing not silicon. If it's silicon it doesn't matter anyways if you run it on ground or space. And energy might be cheaper on space.

Re: Starship V3

#390

Post by christophilus »

ActorNightly wrote: post #295
hvb2 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth (pun intended), would you want that? You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along with what they need. If it is to test an actual community living isolated, sure. But I think it'll always be different because you know that help is at most a few months away and probably a lot less. I don't think you can fake that, unless you're never told you'r…

The point is that we don't have technology (or at least not proven) to make a habitat on earth that can reliably provide isolation from harsh atmosphere. When you are sending people to space on an experimental rocket, with experimental supply for an experimental habitat, all of that shit better be engineered to a huge safety factor, because its not a matter of if things will go wrong, its how often will they go wrong…

Plus insane storms and winds that I’m not sure Antarctica will properly simulate.
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