Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

morningstar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 301 posts

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#201

Post by fc417fc802 »

queenkjuul wrote: post #196
fc417fc802 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's looking at it the wrong way. Just view it as a fleet of satellites with computers in them that exist for the purpose of selling capacity. I don't see any issues with the physical fundamentals but the economics in terms of dollars either per flop or per bit transferred is where I don't understand how it's supposed to work. Satellites are really expensive and electricity on the surface is relatively chea…

The physical fundamentals don't work. Radiating exhaust heat is exponentially harder in space than in the atmosphere.

What is the equilibrium temperature of a panel of black sheet metal hanging out at an orbit of 1 AU? Because if the thing is solar powered then it cannot exceed that temperature on average (ie across the entire mass) due to energy being conserved. You can do goofy things like using solar power coupled with a heating element (such as a GPU) to shift more heat to one part of the panel or another (ie employ an insufficient heat spreader design) but you fundamentally cannot exceed the equilibrium temperature on average.

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#202

Post by ericd »

bandrami wrote: post #168
ericd wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claim they want to get to a gigawatt per year by the end of next year, so we won't have to wait long to see.

He also claimed in 2015 that nobody would be driving their own cars by 2018. Meanwhile I've seen a driverless car once in my life.

Sure, I think everyone knows he's not batting 1000. I've used Waymos and FSD, and they were both great, so I don't think we're too far off now.

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#203

Post by orwin »

hparadiz wrote: post #183
amluto wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cooling system is … aggressive. 110m^2 of radiator to dissipate 120kW average heat. That’s about 1.1kW/m^2, which works out to very close to 100C at the radiator under absolutely perfect conditions (absolute zero ambient temperature, emissivity 1, no adverse geometric effects). Radiating into 300K ambient, it’s 134C. (300K ambient is about what you get if the sun is visible or if a large fraction of what the rad…

I assume the radiators will be in the shadow behind the solar panels and never facing the sun. That's seems like the easiest quick win.

The radiators then need to be protected from earth's heat/light if you want to reach 0K. I agree with GP, it doesn't seem great.

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#204

Post by hparadiz »

queenkjuul wrote: post #200
hparadiz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. If Paypal was his only legacy he would have already done 99% more than most people but then he went on to build a car company that was the best selling electric car brand in the world for a decade and in the process standardized not just electric charging but the plug we're all using today. Then they released a home battery with a sub 10 ms ATS which is necessary for seamless in-house grid/off grid transit…

His company was bought by PayPal and he was fired shortly thereafter. giving him credit for that is a stretch.

"fired" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#205

Post by ericd »

zarzavat wrote: post #199
ericd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US power grid is not able to keep up with demand, it's mired in red tape. There's also a populist revolt against DCs and the infra upgrade costs being dumped on ratepayers. That's the main benefit I see of their plan, from a US perspective. I think China probably will have a significantly easier time.

> The US power grid is not able to keep up with demand, it's mired in red tape Why not build off-grid? > There's also a populist revolt against DCs and the infra upgrade costs being dumped on ratepayers. What about the other 94% of the Earth's landmass?

>Why not build off-grid?

He sort of is. I believe people aren't very happy with his gas turbines powering Colossus near Memphis. There's also currently a >5 year backlog for nat gas turbines for combined cycle plants.

Solar takes up an enormous amount of space to get to reasonable base load, because you have to massively overpanel in order to carry it through winter. You need a large multiple of the panels you'd need in space to get to reliable baseload, plus batteries. During grey winter weeks, our home array is frequently making like 1/6 what it does during summer, and even summer days have night/weather/etc compared to sun sync orbits.

Nuclear is hilariously expensive and slow to build. But I have some hope for small reactors and Commonwealth Fusion Systems/Helion.

>What about the other 94% of the Earth's landmass?

Geopolitical concerns, infrastructure/power availability, security, since these things are full of incredibly valuable hardware.

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#206

Post by LearnYouALisp »

credit_guy wrote: post #77
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 50 rocket launches seems hard to make cheaper than a building.

Why? It seems to me to be much cheaper than a building. Musk's aim is for the cost of one Starship launch to be under $10 million in the long run. 50 rocket launches would be less than half a billion dollars. Can you get a datacenter built on the ground for half a billion dollars?

Are you for real? HN yep

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#207

Post by [deleted] »

kaashif wrote: post #45
tekla wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapness of the building is not the problem that is being dealt with. The construction of the building w/ zoning and the political fights and utilities arguments and years of time and whatever is what is being dealt with by putting it in orbit.

It would be extremely funny if putting things in space is cheaper and faster than dealing with zoning and local politics. It implies that China, which can cut through much red tape and has great (and improving) utilities and infrastructure, lots of energy, can just build normal datacenters and save the cost of dozens of space flights.

[deleted]

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#208

Post by ath3nd »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #94
dozerly wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very simple. You should expect he will do whatever benefits himself.

The one thing you can say though, is that “benefits himself” does not mean: buying a super yacht, a casino, an island, etc. So yeah, he’d YOLO and do the Mars trip before any of the above. Which is what most nerds on HN would love, except their blind hatred for Musk would make them despise even that.

[dead]

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#209

Post by TiredOfLife »

bandrami wrote: post #168
ericd wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claim they want to get to a gigawatt per year by the end of next year, so we won't have to wait long to see.

He also claimed in 2015 that nobody would be driving their own cars by 2018. Meanwhile I've seen a driverless car once in my life.

I have seen 3 people use iPhones in 18 years.

Re: We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued

#210

Post by fc417fc802 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #57
kldavis4 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just doesn't seem to justify anywhere near the valuation though does it?

Disclaimer: I suspect "data centers in space" is just blatant market manipulation by Elon, exactly the same as he'd done dozens of times before with self-driving, etc. Having said that... it might justify the valuation if every other data centre build-out gets blocked by insufficient power supply. Might.

Bear in mind that you could take the solar panels that you would have launched into orbit, use the launch costs to purchase additional solar panels, batteries, and some additional land, and build a data center plus solar farm plus grid scale battery bank on the ground for probably (almost certainly) less than the combined launch costs.

I think the only way compute in space works out financially is if there's so much bulk data already up there that downlink bandwidth becomes a serious bottleneck.

Post reply on HN