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xAI joins SpaceX

spacex.com

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Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#281

Post by brandonlovesked »

FloorEgg wrote: post #256
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.

Setting aside the possibility it's window dressing for a financial bailout, there would be two ways compute in space makes sense: 1) new technology improves vacuum heat radiation efficiency 2) new technology reduces waste heat generation from compute All the takes I've seen have been focused on #1, but I'm starting to wonder about #2... Specifically spintronics and photonic chips.

If you solve 2, heat dissipation goes away on earth too, so what’s the advantage of space

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#282

Post by nhq1298 »

wat10000 wrote: post #194
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…

Never mind operational and maintenance costs. In what fantasy world is it cheaper to put a computer in orbit than in a building on the ground? I don't care how reusable and maintenance-free Starship gets, there's no way even absurdly cheap launches are cheaper than a building. The whole thing makes no sense. What's the advantage of putting AI compute in space? What's even one advantage? There are none. Cooling is har…

The most generous interpretation is that the "AI in space" nonsense is a cover for putting limited AI in space for StarShield (military version of StarLink), which is essentially the "Golden Dome".

It might be possible to scam the Pentagon with some talk about AI and killer satellites that take down ICBMs.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#284

Post by moeadham »

protastus wrote: post #106
Buttons840 wrote: post #50

SpaceX is too big to fail. It's important for national security. I wonder if Elon wants to tangle all his businesses into SpaceX so they are all kept afloat by SpaceX's importance.

Elon can't legally financially entangle Tesla to SpaceX due to Tesla being a public company, so his hands are tied. Tesla is clearly benefiting from protectionism and its sales would collapse if BYD were allowed to openly sell in the US. Most people just want affordable, maintainable and reliable cars.

I’m old enough to remember when this was said about Solar City

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#285

Post by jedberg »

Whenever computer chips go into space, they have to be hardened against radiation, because there is no atmosphere to protect them. Otherwise you get random bit flips.

This process takes a while, which is partly why all the computers in space seem out of date. Because they are.

No one is going to want to use chips that are a many years out of date or subject to random bit flips.

(Although now it got me thinking, do random bit flips matter when training a trillion parameter model?)

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#286

Post by don_neufeld »

paxys wrote: post #172
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…

The famous Musk timeline. "By next year, 2 year tops".

By his original timeline we should have landed on Mars… 4 years ago.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/20170929-spacex-updated-c...

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#287

Post by allenrb »

This makes me genuinely sad. SpaceX was the one thing of his that Elon has largely avoided screwing up. Imho, this is in large part due to Gwynne Shotwell. She seems to have the personality (not to mention, personal wealth) to kick Elon in the head when he tries to mess things up.

What’s happening now is nothing more than a transparent effort to couple the AI hype-wagon to SpaceX in order to drive the valuation higher in the minds of investors who still think that LLMs will completely transform society.

I’ll be thrilled if the rocket folks can avoid being distracted by this nonsense, but I’m not optimistic.

I’ve been following SpaceX since something like the 2nd Falcon 1 launch and this is the worst thing I’ve seen happen. Sad times.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#290

Post by HPsquared »

jackyinger wrote: post #152
wongarsu wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You operate them like Microsoft's submerged data center project: you don't do maintenance, whatever fails fails. You start with enough redundancy in critical components like power and networking and accept that compute resources will slowly decrease as nodes fail No operational needs is obviously ... simplified. You still need to manage downlink capacity, station keeping, collision avoidance, etc. But for a large con…

Unless I missed something the Microsoft underwater data center was basically a publicity stunt. Anyone who thinks it makes sense to blast data centers into space has never seen how big and heavy they are, or thought about their immense power consumption, much less the challenge of radiating away that much waste heat into space.

Ironically a benefit of underwater datacenters would be reduced cosmic rays. Not so great in orbit, I imagine!
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