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

Starship V3

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 667 posts

Re: Starship V3

#401

Post by xnx »

mrandish wrote: post #67
slac wrote: post #20

Gotta pump that Grok IPO /s Seriously though, the whole SpaceXAI makes zero sense to me. SpaceX was a wonderful company and there was zero need to pollute it with Twitter and a service that creates sexual images of people without their consent.

I was initially very skeptical about the viability of space-based data centers but after a couple hours reading papers, studies and summary technical assessments I realized there are a range of credible expert viewpoints from, "pretty unlikely" to "it could actually work". There at least appear to be plausible, though unproven, solutions to the most obvious drive-by objections I had off the top of my non-expert head.…

There are a lot of things that are possible that make no financial sense.

Re: Starship V3

#402

Post by adastra22 »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #367
BoxedEmpathy wrote: post #52

I really hope I get to see a permanent settlement on Mars or the moon. I don't care who settles it I just want to see humanity reach for the stars.

There's a whole book positing that a permanent settlement on Mars is unlikely to work, and I have not seen their arguments debunked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_City_on_Mars

As someone from within the space industry, their arguments are beyond bad. Indeed they miss the point entirely. If you don’t see much people talking about it, it’s because most people in the industry don’t want to stoop to that level.

But there are a few who have bothered. Here is one of the better ones: https://planetocracy.org/p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-i

Re: Starship V3

#403

Post by hgoel »

laughing_man wrote: post #266
inglor_cz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engines for New Glenn ain't bad either. Competition does improve products.

New Glenn's engines are quite a bit less efficient than those at SpaceX. Lower chamber pressures, lower thrust:weight ratio, and they're partial flow staged combustion. I assume BO will increase their performance over time, but for now they company is about a decade behind SpaceX.

That doesn't make the BE-4 not impressive. It isn't a full flow staged combustion engine like Raptor, but it's still a highly efficient, high thrust, relightable and deeply throttleable rocket engine. These things don't often come in the same package when it comes to rocket engines.

Re: Starship V3

#404

Post by saberience »

geertj wrote: post #397
saberience wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah you would need 10-20 American football fields worth of radiators for a single data-center... so yes, it "can" work, but it's completely inefficient and unrealistic.

The plan is to launch a constellation of smaller AI sats not a monolithic large data center. The calculations I have seen actually have a smaller radiator area than solar panels. Scott Manley’s has a video on this where he goes into some numbers.

Scott Manley's video uses 20kw as a reference number which isn't even half of the power usage of a modern GB200 rack. I.e. not even close to the power usage of an actual datacenter. In fact, not even 1% of the power usage of a datacenter...

Also, how is a constellation of satellites any easier in this case? They all need extremely large radiators, they all need maintenance, they all need high bandwidth communication.

If you calculate the actual cooling requirements for megawatts of server, you end up with needing many, many football fields of cooling.

It's nonsensical. Sure you can make the numbers sort of work for a single server, but a single server on earth costs MUCH MUCH less to launch, maintain, etc. So why bother doing it in space? We just end up with loads of unusable space servers as they gradually breakdown and cannot be repaired.

Re: Starship V3

#405

Post by GuB-42 »

bvcp wrote: post #339
GuB-42 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compute in space is doable, we already send plenty of computers up there, technologically, it is not even a challenge. It just doesn't make sense economically, even with Starship, it is making things harder for no good reason. Starlink is different, it makes sense. Covering the entire Earth, including the oceans with cell towers for global internet connectivity is harder than having a satellite constellation. The opp…

how does the economics compare at scale building a persistent 24/7 supply of 1,000 gw isnt easy or cheap

It is certainly not easy or cheap, but doing it in space is harder and more expensive.

Re: Starship V3

#406

Post by adastra22 »

svantana wrote: post #326
sschueller wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only cool by radiation in space. You may get more energy from the sun but how are you going to get rid of all the heat fast enough?

How hot do you think black objects in space get? Something like 10°C. Look up thermal equilibrium of an ideal black body.

In the vicinity of the Earth, they get to about the temperature of the Earth. That’s not a coincidence. Hotter if they are actively generating heat.

Re: Starship V3

#408

Post by api »

imbusy111 wrote: post #60
sergiotapia wrote: post #43

Spacex may be the most important company on the planet. What greater goal is there than expanding humanity to the stars!

Figuring out a way to coexist peacefully before expanding any further.

Then we never go.

What if expanding helps us coexist peacefully? Maybe being in a crab bucket with no frontier is part of the issue.

Re: Starship V3

#409

Post by hgoel »

larusso wrote: post #42
randallsquared wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the tile complexity is worrying. I hope they're able to simplify that or fully streamline the manufacturing and attachment. From the outside, the tiles seem like a Shuttle re-run, and refurbishment of those was one of the long poles in reuse.

But for the shuttle each title was kinda unique and had a specific spot. If they managed to find a shape where you don’t have to mark each tile but can just pull them from a box for replacement is a huge win. Maybe even have some spares and allow them to be replaced during an EVA. This was all not really feasible with the Spaceshuttle.

The other aspect is the stainless steel hull that can take more punishment, mechanical mounting of tiles rather than glue (though iirc some places still ended up having to use glue) and more developed automation tech making it realistic to get a machine to do the installation and inspection work.

Also, the ability to fly without crew and the willingness to have highly visible failures means they can actually exercise the heat shield to understand what works.

Re: Starship V3

#410

Post by childintime »

kortilla wrote: post #288
childintime wrote: post #286

These datacenters in space will become space junk. Doesn't seem to be sustainable. With a million of these it's hard to imagine why this would be a good idea, and it starts looking like insanity.

Nope, they will be in a low earth orbit that will decay and enter the atmosphere without maintenance burns

They'll all have a sun synchronous polar orbit.. I don't think they'll be very low orbit, unless they are like trains, at every 1km a satellite.
Post reply on HN