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

xAI joins SpaceX

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#221

Post by Aurornis »

pantalaimon wrote: post #112
alangibson wrote: post #89

Either this is a straight up con, or Musk found a glitch in physics. It's extremely difficult to keep things cold in space.

Existing satellites manage to keep their equipment that already can consume several kW cool just fine. You might need space for radiators, but there is plenty space in space.

> keep their equipment that already can consume several kW cool just fine

That's equivalent to a couple datacenter GPUs.

> You might need space for radiators, but there is plenty space in space.

Finding space in space is the least difficult problem. Getting it up there is not easy.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#222

Post by darth_avocado »

alangibson wrote: post #89

Either this is a straight up con, or Musk found a glitch in physics. It's extremely difficult to keep things cold in space.

He buys twitter at an inflated valuation. Runs it to the ground to a much lower valuation of $9B. [1] Then, his company Xai buys Twitter at a $33B, inflating the valuation up. Then SpaceX merges with Xai for no particular reason, but is expected to IPO at a $1T+ in the upcoming years. [3]

I’m not that smart, but if I were, I would be thinking this is an extended way to move the losses from the Twitter purchase on to the public markets.

[1] https://www.axios.com/2023/12/31/elon-musks-x-fidelity-valua...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/musks-xai-buys-social-...

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/02/elon-musk-spacex-xai-ipo...

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#223

Post by TheGRS »

Zigurd wrote: post #102
zeptonix wrote: post #9

Seems like a great way to play games with moving money around. Come up with a "valuation" and then "acquire".

It worked for his Twitter co-investors. I guess they overlap enough with Xai investors for them to think it's more clever than it is a rip off.

I'm pretty amazed one can play a shell game for so long and so openly with the public.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#225

Post by sillysaurusx »

TheGRS wrote: post #201
sillysaurusx wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is xAI Twitter? I thought they were separate companies, but honestly I don’t know anymore.

Yes X was merged into xAI last year I believe.

That’s wild. So it’s true that Twitter is merging with SpaceX?

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#226

Post by dahinds »

FireBeyond wrote: post #166
dahinds wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really true, though? The ISS does it with radiators that are ~1/2 the area of its solar panels, and both should scale linearly with power?

The ISS isn't consuming and generating megawatts+ of power.

Yes but if the solar panel area scales linearly with radiator area, the problem doesn't get worse?

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#227

Post by pantalaimon »

hristov wrote: post #210
rybosworld wrote: post #70

> The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth. > My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space. This is so obviously false. Fo…

Currently, just a cursory google search shows $1500-3000 per kilogram to put something into low earth orbit. Lets take the low bound because of efficiencies of scale. So $1500. A million tons will cost $1500x1000x1000000= 1,500,000,000,000. That is one and a half TRILLION dollars per year. That is only the lift costs, it does not take into account the cost of manufacturing the actual space data centers. Who is going…

That's the price before Starship which would be the prerequisite for this whole project.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#229

Post by raincole »

seanalltogether wrote: post #160
Saline9515 wrote: post #28

I still don't understand the "data center in space" narrative. How are they going to solve the cooling issue?

Presumably the cooling problem gets hand waved away as a technical detail, and the real selling point is data centers that aren't subject to any regional governments laws.

> and the real selling point is data centers that aren't subject to any regional governments laws.

No? ISS isn't exempt from legal systems.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex...

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#230

Post by padjo »

gok wrote: post #45

> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon. edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial…

Pfft that would just require setting up an entire lunar mineral extraction and refining system larger than we have on earth, just minor details.
Post reply on HN