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

Starbase, LA

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 641 posts

Re: Starbase, LA

#401

Post by vel0city »

oceanplexian wrote: post #180
rtkwe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue is these kinds of construction jobs are temporary. It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over. Starbase will require more people on site at least.

The construction is temporary but what are the economic impacts of having a fully operational spaceport that launches 20,000% more tonnage to orbit than the Florida Space Coast? Probably a great deal of long term economic impact.

One would think the same thing about having some of the biggest chemical manufacturing and refining industries around and yet the people of Louisiana are some of the poorest in the US.

Tons of money flowing through the state. Just to a select few people who own the plants for the most part, not for the people working there day to day. I don't see why one would think that would change.

Re: Starbase, LA

#402

Post by piloto_ciego »

arrosenberg wrote: post #383
piloto_ciego wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

Everyone says this about the rate of improvement every month, and yet, I'm not just basically conjuring the code into existence that's paying my bills and building my company. Personally, I know it's just my anec-data, but I'm pretty much convinced that for kvm work, we're already there or extremely close to agi in any meaningful sense.

Re: Starbase, LA

#403

Post by piloto_ciego »

ggreer wrote: post #395
UltraSane wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That includes overprovisioning for times the satellite is behind the earth. And the Tesla robotaxi is still a embarrassing failure.

I'm sorry, but you do not know what you are talking about. If you'd read the Starcloud white paper I linked to, you'd see that the plan is to put satellites in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit, meaning they would be in constant sunlight and the backs of the solar panels would radiate to deep space. No orbital compute project is planning to put satellites in an orbit where Earth blocks the sun, as that would require…

This is the correct take here. SSO is where they'll park these things.

Re: Starbase, LA

#404

Post by wat10000 »

modeless wrote: post #345
wat10000 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DC to Baltimore tunnel, LA tunnel network, Chicago airport tunnel. New Roadster, possibly Tesla Semi. Battery swap stations. “Alien dreadnaught” factory with no humans on the production line. Dragon 2 propulsive landing. Self-driving ought to qualify at least partially, because although the project continues and is doing quite well, a huge number of cars were sold with hardware that was promised to be capable of it a…

TBC is still pursuing government permits and contracts to build tunnels. Not having succeeded in every case is not the same as abandoning the project. The new roadster is delayed, not abandoned. It's known to be in active development and is very likely to be demoed this year. Wrong timeline but not abandoned. The Tesla semi is on the road daily and the factory to build large quantities is almost complete. They're hos…

Did TBC ever pursue government permits and contracts for the DC tunnel? The nonsense "verbal govt approval" they mentioned makes me skeptical of the whole thing.

New Roadster is over six years late and has basically gone silent at this point. Maybe it'll still come, just extremely late, but I'm very skeptical.

Semi might be real, we'll see.

If cars that were built with AP2/2.5/3 get upgraded to unsupervised FSD, I'll eat my hat. They don't even know what hardware will be needed yet and some of those cars are now a decade old.

Re: Starbase, LA

#405

Post by ericmay »

potatototoo99 wrote: post #194
ericmay wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it won't. Separately other countries don't get to dictate our internal policies or whether we decide to build any sort of missile defense system. If we're going to be nuked over it, then oh well they'll get nuked too. Never can we live as hostages to wanna-be dictators and tyrants (Xi Jingping, Vladimir Putin, IRGC, &c.) and if they want to blow the whole world up then so be it but acquiescing to their bullying is…

Is your cognitive dissonance that strong that you don't see that if all major countries follow that line of thought all have to have their own golden domes and invite WW3?

I don’t think that’s an appropriate use of the term ‘cognitive dissonance’, but suffice to say, no, if the US develops the Golden Dome as currently described there is no danger of all major countries also developing the same technology and then starting World War III.

Re: Starbase, LA

#406

Post by jongjong »

I have nothing against humans becoming multi-planetary but this is a luxurious desire at this point in history. We should solve poverty first. This is the kind of project which you do once there are no more problems to solve on earth.

Re: Starbase, LA

#407

Post by s1artibartfast »

utopiah wrote: post #108
chasd00 wrote: post #2

Man if this actually starts to happen it's a good time to be a welder, concrete worker, or any general contractor or tradesman in Louisiana. Coastal Louisiana is some of the poorest areas in the US even more so than the valley in Texas where Starbase Texas is located. Probably 10-20 years worth of solid work building out that site.

Hmmm is it though? Quite a few articles like https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-stiffing-contr... make me think they better ask to be paid upfront.

And SpaceX is suing that firm for 500-800 million for fraud and unauthorized labor markup.

Re: Starbase, LA

#408

Post by s1artibartfast »

ricardobeat wrote: post #237
utopiah wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm is it though? Quite a few articles like https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-stiffing-contr... make me think they better ask to be paid upfront.

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

Because they got paid 1.4 billion for work before SpaceX accused them of fraud, put a hold on future payments, and sued them

Re: Starbase, LA

#409

Post by protocolture »

rtkwe wrote: post #75
chasd00 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't fix everything wrong in the state but it's > 0. There's a lot of additional economic activity that comes with the construction too. Restaurants get busier, Walmart gets busier, lots of auto repair/servicing will be needed etc. Som e people will move for construction and end up staying there. It can be a shock to the local communities though but i think the positives still outweigh the negatives.

The biggest issue is these kinds of construction jobs are temporary. It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over. Starbase will require more people on site at least.

>It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over.

The issue with Datacentres is that you cant model the advantage of lower colo costs on jobs in the area.

The problem is that some people dont want to permit anything unless they can measure the benefits, when the market doesnt always work like that.

Re: Starbase, LA

#410

Post by estearum »

maxlin wrote: post #320
ryandvm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. I can't imaging the figures from a Musk venture not holding up.

Many said that about Starlink too. Impossible to send so many rockets up. Till it isn't.

Could you find a source of someone saying this?
Post reply on HN