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Starbase, LA

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Re: Starbase, LA

#381

Post by wat10000 »

modeless wrote: post #366
zzrrt wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572 "Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins." (July 2017, years after saying he wouldn't build it himself.) Technically it's not a commitment to build, but any other leader in the market would be considered to have failed if they made such a statement and then quietly abandoned it.

Yeah under that post he also says "If you want this to happen fast, please let your local & federal elected representatives know" and "Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly". Not just "technically" not a commitment to build. Clearly dependent on other factors. Go ahead and count it as "abandoned" if you want. He did talk about building a Hyperloop and is not…

That would be reasonable if not for the BS “verbal govt approval” bit.

Re: Starbase, LA

#382

Post by archagon »

Rover222 wrote: post #352
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation. We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon, but overall I still hope it's possible. (Anyone asking antagonistic questions can go ahead and save their fingers, I won't respond to the petty comments.)

[flagged]

Ironically, this is the most Reddit-brained kind of comment imaginable.

Re: Starbase, LA

#383

Post by arrosenberg »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #326
arrosenberg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of getting them there will be absurd and even if someone was willing to fund it, where do you put the heat they will generate?

If trying to do it terrestrially is because the city council will riot then doing it on orbit seems like the better play. Just saying. “I can do it in this challenging environment or I can not do it at all” is kind of a false choice if you think AGI is imminent. Personally, I think we’re already there for KVM stuff, it’s just the goal posts are accelerating at an exponential rate the same with the capabilities.

"If you think AGI is imminent" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The rate of improvement has already leveled off significantly and there is little-to-no evidence that LLMs are close to or capable of achieving general intelligence.

If you assume we aren't going to create a singularity in the next few decades, then no, it doesn't make sense economically to do it. Even ignoring that we'd have to develop a design that works in space, and even if SpaceX is able to significantly reduce cost per kg to orbit, it would still cost 15-30x more to build the same data center, and you have to pay that premium every time a piece of equipment burns out.

It would be cheaper to build aircraft carrier sized ships to hold them or give every adult in the town where they are building a couple million dollars to fuck off. And again, that's only if SpaceX can produce an as-of-yet mythical level of scale. If they stop anywhere short of that, then we're talking about billions of dollars to build in space what you could build on earth for tens of millions.

Re: Starbase, LA

#384

Post by Dig1t »

dgellow wrote: post #262
ricardobeat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a contractor continue working for two years racking up a $136M dollar bill?

Because they believe the lies from Musk?

Starbase, TX

Giga Texas

Giga Nevada

Terrafab

etc

There's plenty of examples of this company building these types of projects and following through.

Why do you think this one would be any different?

Re: Starbase, LA

#385

Post by UltraSane »

ggreer wrote: post #373
UltraSane wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need both enormous solar panels and radiator panels. 1MW needs about 7000 square meters of solar panels. This would require 1,500 square meters of radiator panels along with a lot of coolant pipes that have to be kept edge on to the sun at all times. And all of this will require thousands of kilograms of structural support.

What sort of solar panel gets only 140 watts per square meter in space? Even with efficiency as low as 20%, you'd get 1 megawatt from 3,700 square meters. And you'd design the satellite to minimize heat transfer between the panels and main body, because panels can run at higher temperatures than the computers. Since heat radiation goes up with the 4th power of temperature, the panels would not need large radiators. I…

That includes overprovisioning for times the satellite is behind the earth.

And the Tesla robotaxi is still a embarrassing failure.

Re: Starbase, LA

#386

Post by Dig1t »

sockaddr wrote: post #74

Elon-types won't "dig us out" of our mess. Removing parasitic elements in government spending and policy will. This starts with politics. We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. These are all things Elon actively works against. You aren't part of his future.

I don't know, I'm sure you'd say Europe is a far more healthy, educated, engaged and safe place (by typical metrics), but they are not building anything like this and probably never will be able to approach anything close to it. In fact they have technologically stagnated in basically every way and are completely reliant on China and the US for technology.

SpaceX is 85% of all mass to orbit for the entire planet, then it's China, and Europe is The next people to set foot on the moon will likely be Americans, and they will be put there by SpaceX rockets.

Re: Starbase, LA

#387

Post by riffic »

moberley wrote: post #126

Will they have to rename the other Starbase Louisiana? https://starbasela.org/

Generally, the way this works is that the richest person gets to whatever they want because they own the people who write the rules, and the people with less money have to abide or change.

Re: Starbase, LA

#388

Post by jjulius »

testing22321 wrote: post #340
webdood90 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’re demonstrating how far your head is in the sand Interesting. Perhaps ironic? If only society cared about genuinely good people like they seem to care about Musk. It's puzzling.

I want to be clear: I don’t care about Musk as a person. I care about facts. I care about achievements. Just the same as saying Israel is committing genocide is not antisemitism, saying Musk has achieved incredible things is not caring about or supporting him. Both cases are simply stating facts without any judgement or show of support/not support.

>I care about facts.

>Both cases are simply stating facts...

Sure, unless (as I pointed out in my other response) we're playing fast and loose with what actually constitutes "facts".

Re: Starbase, LA

#389

Post by api »

mandolingual wrote: post #377
api wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s Italian futurism, which was a specific movement. I think the term was being used more broadly here. Go find some Soviet space art, or mid century American “space age” stuff, or less dark forms of cyberpunk / cyber culture from the 80s and 90s. None of that is fascist yet all of it is popularly called “futurism.” I’ve even seen the term associated with solarpunk. As popularly used it means more or less the idea…

Mid century American and Soviet space art had transparent political purpose, as does solarpunk. Futurism is rarely if ever just "it's the future, and that's neat!". It comes with the inherently political baggage of "We got from where we are to the glorious future, by way of (ideology)". Star Trek is a great example of this.

That could be said about everything including things usually not associated with futurism like romanticism. Everything carries at least a little political baggage.

I was responding to what seemed like the implication that futurism was fascist.

Re: Starbase, LA

#390

Post by dgellow »

Dig1t wrote: post #384
dgellow wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they believe the lies from Musk?

Starbase, TX Giga Texas Giga Nevada Terrafab etc There's plenty of examples of this company building these types of projects and following through. Why do you think this one would be any different?

We are literally talking about a case where they aren’t paying contractors they work with
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