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Starship V3

spacex.com

341–350 of 667 posts

Re: Starship V3

#341

[flagged]

Beyond aggressively optimistic timelines, I find it difficult to disagree with the premise. The aggressively optimistic timelines is also what makes it feasible to even attempt these things, where e.g. the amount of iteration required for Starship would have broken most other companies. > In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. In the long term - all mass and energy available is outside o…

> What is really going to be that difficult with space-based compute?

Stopping some random rogue nation blowing it up.

Re: Starship V3

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As problems go, radiation and cooling seem to have relatively low dimensionality compared to the other problems. It seems to be mostly a question of optimizing within the dimensions of dissipation / structure / deployment / service / cost / weight. When all is said and done, the cooling solution will end up being a module that can deal with some power dissipation, cost X amount, weight Y amount, have structural inter…

Isn't the question more an economic one: Is it cheaper to put some solar cells into the desert and to buy some batteries, or to launch things into space (plus the premium for radiation hardening and ensuring it survives long enough because you cannot service it). Given the current trajectory of battery and solar prices I just don't that space-based systems are cheaper in any way. Of course there is a long-term aspect…

you are ignoring the scale factor, approvals for this much infrastructure is really hard and slow

Re: Starship V3

#343
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flag has been coopted as a symbol of right wing nationalist politics. It's the easiest way to identify the right - their very strange love of the flag.

What? There are three flags flying in my street alone and I'm in the middle of the liberal bay area.

I presume they meant in Europe.

St. George's Cross has long been a symbol of racism in the UK and they've recently been trying to do the same with the union jack.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c626vxyxgj6o

Re: Starship V3

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the long term In case anyone is wondering how Tesla’s stock price remain wildly detached from its business reality, keep these four words in mind. If you can convince people that anything about you and your business has to be evaluated on a literally astronomical timescale, you can justify any valuation you desire, because your believers will give you infinite time to realize their investment returns. It has not…

> believers If it were only retail investors, your assumptions could make sense. However plenty of the share ownership is institutional investors. Most of them care a bit more about fundamentals. (I'm ignoring passive investors just using indexes).

Secondary effects can also make this a good investment decision: if you have enough other delusional people to buy into it, you still gain from it, even if you believe it's bullshit.

Re: Starship V3

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the long term In case anyone is wondering how Tesla’s stock price remain wildly detached from its business reality, keep these four words in mind. If you can convince people that anything about you and your business has to be evaluated on a literally astronomical timescale, you can justify any valuation you desire, because your believers will give you infinite time to realize their investment returns. It has not…

> believers If it were only retail investors, your assumptions could make sense. However plenty of the share ownership is institutional investors. Most of them care a bit more about fundamentals. (I'm ignoring passive investors just using indexes).

A lot of institutional investors get caught out all the time when they make mistakes about the fundamentals.

Re: Starship V3

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond aggressively optimistic timelines, I find it difficult to disagree with the premise. The aggressively optimistic timelines is also what makes it feasible to even attempt these things, where e.g. the amount of iteration required for Starship would have broken most other companies. > In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. In the long term - all mass and energy available is outside o…

But if solar panel is significantly cheaper and latency doesn't matter you can have servers in any part of the world. Even if they are not up 50% of the time due to limited battery it would still be cheaper.

whose wasting 50% of their silicon production capacity to save on power. doesnt make alot of sense even with money silicon is hard to buy at scale

Re: Starship V3

#347
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond aggressively optimistic timelines, I find it difficult to disagree with the premise. The aggressively optimistic timelines is also what makes it feasible to even attempt these things, where e.g. the amount of iteration required for Starship would have broken most other companies. > In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. In the long term - all mass and energy available is outside o…

> In the long term - all mass and energy available is outside of Earth - what is here is not even a rounding error. Define “long term”. Nuclear energy is practically unlimited, plus fusion (if it ever works).

I still don't get why so many people who watch/read scifi conclude "yes this is a legitimate and realistic vision of the future, and not Wizards and Dragons but with Technology"

Going to mars or staying on the moon will be a Darwin Award-level adventure.

Re: Starship V3

#348
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.

The joint solar panel + computer system will be pretty close to an ideal black body, which near earth will have an average temperature of about 10°C. And radiation is an issue, but starlink seems to work so I don't see why this wouldn't.

Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable.

You make a H100, ship it to a space dock, load it onto a rocket (rocket requires fuuel, the rocket, etc.) send it up, deploy it, monitor it live 24/7, have means of adjusting its orbit, if it breaks, its immediade full loss, otherwise it will degenerate faster in space than on earth, now it needs a high speed up/downlink to do anything reasonable which also requires a base station. The base station has to track this satelite.

One H100 costs 40k, consumes 700 Watt peak and need probably at a minimum 5 square meter of area for cooling and solar.

The colossus datacenter from musk has 250.000 of these.

Now you have to track 250.000 single satelites, you have to coordinate the communication between the, up and downlink to earth.

250.000 * 5 square meter of area.

This alone increases the potential debris in space.

And this is ONE 300 MW Datacenter replacement. ONE.

Re: Starship V3

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm basically assuming that "space-based data centers" are some Glomar Explorer-style cover for something else.

Yeah, I agree. A massive radar network, passive or active is the most likely possibility I have come across. You'd need a LOT of compute at each node to get the most out of the network. I found this video[1] to be a pretty convincing analysis of the absolute max capability you could expect, and it would indeed be impressive. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A

Well, that likely already exists as Starshield - not to mention all the pubmic SAR sats everyone has by this point.

Re: Starship V3

#350
post #291
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are literally enormous problems powering AI data centers on the Earth right now. No, we don't have the power on Earth. In terms of launch cost, Starship makes launch cost negligible. Some estimates are that it will cost less to launch a tonne to orbit, than to ship across the US by train. Even if this figure is slightly low, that has nothing compared to the cost of real estate, construction costs, all of the bu…

> There are literally enormous problems powering AI data centers on the Earth right now. Political, not technical. Going to space replaces a domestic problem of angry locals with an international problem of angry governments. > No, we don't have the power on Earth. The power problem isn't meaningfully improved by going to space. For every GW you put in a sun synchronous orbit to get permanent light, you need around 6…

now try to build this infrastructure project and get approvals at all levels of government in a time frame that doesnt see you fall behind
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