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xAI joins SpaceX

spacex.com

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Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#401

Post by infogulch »

Saline9515 wrote: post #28

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

Send up a spacecraft with back-to-back / equal area solar panels and radiators (have to reject heat backwards, can't reject it to your neighboring sphere elements!). Push your chip temp as much as possible (90C? 100C?). Find a favorable choice of vapor for a heat pump / Organic Rankine Cycle (possibly dual-loop) to boost the temp to 150C for the radiator. Cool the chip with vapor 20C below its running temp. 20-40% of the solar power goes to run the pumps, leaving 60-80% for the workload (a resistor with extra steps).

There are a lot of degrees of freedom to optimize something like this.

Spacecraft radiator system using a heat pump - https://patents.google.com/patent/US6883588B1/en

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#403

Post by kevstev »

SimianSci wrote: post #142
kachapopopow wrote: post #132

isn't this just fraud in broad daylight? I don't get it. Why not at least try to hide it?

Its only fraud if poor people do it. Welcome to American politics.

But the "fraud" here is being done mostly to VC investors with deep pockets and lawyers, at least until he tries to take this entity public. And I can't imagine them just taking this lying down, but then again maybe they realize that offloading this steaming pile on public market investors is the best way out. But even then... SpaceX seemed like it was quite viable on its own, the investors there are the real losers here.

It is all very puzzling to me.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#404

Post by kcb »

awesome_dude wrote: post #205
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.

SpaceX is slated to go public some time this year - June IIRC The biggest selling point /was/ that Musk was being managed there, he wasn't tinkering with SpaceX like Twitter or Tesla, and his foolhardy direction was kept out of the company. BUT, like Tesla, Musk cannot help himself and is making SpaceX look like a very bad investment - tying his other interests with SpaceX, allegedly using SpaceX money as a "war ches…

> The biggest selling point /was/ that Musk was being managed there, he wasn't tinkering with SpaceX like Twitter or Tesla, and his foolhardy direction was kept out of the company

The biggest selling point to who? Definitely not wall street

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#405

Post by afavour »

Culonavirus wrote: post #304
afavour wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as a statement contains a timeframe estimate by Musk you know to disregard it entirely.

The thing is: at the end of the day, SpaceX takes the "impossible" and makes it "late". People are going to Tory Bruno the space datacenters until one day their Claude agent swarm's gonna run in space and they'll be wondering "how did we get here"?

The thing is: at the end of the day, making absolute statements about the inevitability of future success is a fool’s errand.

Musk has a documented history of failing to deliver on promises, timescale or no. So it’s best to engage in some actual critical thinking about the claims he is making.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#406

Post by cowsandmilk »

moeadham wrote: post #276
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…

In fairness, solar cells can be about 5x more efficient in space (irradiance, uptime).

It is more than 5x less expensive to get surface area on earth’s surface.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#407

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

kortilla wrote: post #305
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.

Being too big to fail is not really a desirable outcome, it’s just better than failure. Boeing is too important to fail as well but it’s been terrible as a shareholder

> > Boeing is too important to fail as well but it’s been terrible as a shareholder

Your opinion on Boeing being terrible as a shareholder vis-a-vis Tesla would be completely reversed if dividends and capital gains of the 2 companies were to be offered in the form of miles to be flown on Boeing planes and miles on Teslas Uber/Taxi/Autonomous taxis instead of dollars

The absolute overperformance on the stock market that Tesla has enjoyed vis-a-vis Boeing is not rooted in a concrete and tangible quality of life improvement for citizens. Not American citizens, nor global citizens for that matter.

It is my opinion that for all public companies in which it is possible to do so government should mandate payment in kind to all shareholders and board members to prevent the excessive promotional , cult and all around BS aspect of marketing to take over and allow people to profit just by riding off those, and Musk is the GOAT at that.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#408

Post by jaco6 »

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.

[dead]

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#410

Post by ralfd »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #233
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…

There's clearly rhetorical hyperbole happening there. But assuming that thermal rejection is good in space, & launch costs continue falling, as earth-based data centers become power/grid-constrained, there is a viable path for space power gen. The craziest part of those statements is "100 kW per ton." IDK what math he is doing there or future assumptions, but today we can't even sniff at 10 kW per ton. iROSA [1] on t…

The company lists their ISS solar panels as 28 kW for 331 kg, which comes pretty near to 100 W/kg.

Company website:

https://rdw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/redwire-roll-out-...

And their Opal configuration beats the metric: 5.3 kW for 42.7 kg.

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