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Starship V3

spacex.com

451–460 of 667 posts

Re: Starship V3

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody (sane) is talking about putting nuclear reactors on Satellites in close Earth orbit so we don't have to worry about them generating heat. They've got solar panels that move some of the solar energy they absorb to a central location which presents problems in moving the waste heat back out so that spot doesn't get too hot. But that doesn't change the overall equilibrium temperature.

Re: Starship V3

#452
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

In fact, not even 1% of the power usage of a datacenter...

Right, but SpaceX has already filed plans with the FCC to launch a million of them, which is to say, 10K of your datacenter units. Tying back to the article, this plan is definitely going to require Starship and airline-like operations.

Re: Starship V3

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has been out competed in Batteries, EV's and Robots so this is his new move. He did something similar with his solar panel company put it inside Tesla and then it has almost disappeared from the news. He puts the AI company inside of Spacex makes up a lot of unrealistic numbers to pump up price and captures most of the stock gains from Spacex IPO by diluting others people shares.

You make it sound like Tesla was a failure and he's only interested in capitalistic success, where if you've been following him for years you'd know this has been his plan all along. He built Tesla when electric cars were mocked and his plan was to push electric cars to be mainstream. To now say "Tesla has been outcompeted and so now he's doing something else [implied- to keep his power]" is to simplify and misinterp…

He is so good at rewriting history. People buy it so much, it’s incredible. He didn’t build Tesla, Eberhard and Tarpenning did.

Re: Starship V3

#454
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Later in the video he runs through the changes needed for 100kw per rack.

Wow, one 100kw rack!

Dude, you realize that right now there are 100+s of data centers in construction around the world often in the 500MW to 1PW range? I.e. there are many, many datacenters (100s) in construction, right now, with 100s of MW up to multiple PW?

Scott's analysis is out by several orders of magnitude!

Everyone knows its "theoretically" possible to have a single server or a single rack in space.

The big and most obvious glaring miss is, how would it be economically viable and operationally viable to have datacenters in space which compete with datacenters on the ground.

We are experts are creating economically profitable (very profitable) datacenters on the ground, which work really well for inference and training, which are cooled really well, can be maintained easily, etc. The idea that we are going to have 100s of MW clusters or 1PW clusters in space, and they are going to be competitive economically, and we are going to be able to maintain them, and they are going to actually WORK (i.e. how will the networking be competitive with datacenters on earth), is frankly laughable.

Scott is totally talking rubbish on this.

Re: Starship V3

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

In fact, not even 1% of the power usage of a datacenter... Right, but SpaceX has already filed plans with the FCC to launch a million of them, which is to say, 10K of your datacenter units. Tying back to the article, this plan is definitely going to require Starship and airline-like operations.

Yeah. I don't have any doubts that this is something that can be done. But doing it cheaply enough to be worth while is the difficult bit. Elon does have reputation for delivering impressive things, but not for finishing them on the deadlines he sets.

Re: Starship V3

#456

He again mentions data center in space. He has to be the biggest richest idiot on the planet. It should be a lot cheaper to just buy massive solar (wait, couldn't he just make them himself with his tesla roofs?) and batteries (which Tesla also makes) and put Datacenter in some dessert and put fiber to that place... But it seems he needs some angle to push all this necessary investment into something? Are we now in th…

So you think China is also idiot [0], or Google [1], [2], or Blue Origin [3]? Do you have aerospace engineering background? what are your arguments? I don't know how all of these turn out to be, but when you keep repeat the same arguments, without anything to back it up, you should have some reflection. [0] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-01-29/China-unveils-space-am... [1] https://www.reuters.com/science/google-spac…

From the links you shared, it seems they are first trying to determine whether it's economically feasible at all.

Re: Starship V3

#457

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.

The data centres are for the secret radar constellation masquerading as an ISP company that is Starlink You are watching the slave grid being erected over your head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A See 1:38:00

Shouldn't we be able to detect radio coming from SAR satellites? If SpaceX were to launch a cover SAR constellation, why can't they just use starlink as an excuse, why do they have to invent a new businessline?

Re: Starship V3

#458
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>hostile ... international governments you mean other than China, russia, NK and Iran?

Yeah, but any of those attacking US satellites means an apocalyptic war, and the provenance of the attack would be clear. You cannot exactly hide a suborbital rocket launch. Even in Russian nationalist circles, the occassional idea of shooting down current Starlink satellites is usually met with derision from the rest of the discussion group (see, for example, topwar.ru comments). That is just step too far, too dange…

>any of those attacking US satellites means an apocalyptic war

or a tweet calling it "very weak response" and lying about being warned in advance.

Re: Starship V3

#459
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere. According to whom exactly? For me, permanent means "permanently without breaks".

If you want another word for that, go with "Continuous". The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2, 2000. But it was not, in fact, expected by anyone to be a permanent station; It is made of non-replaceable parts that age and fail (decade scale), it only has very limited life support supplies on board (month scale).

I would call the ISS a permanent station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#:~...

> It is made of non-replaceable parts

Every part of the ISS is replaceable if you want to.

> it only has very limited life support supplies on board (month scale)

I still don't see why self-sustainability is a part of being "permanent".

Re: Starship V3

#460

He again mentions data center in space. He has to be the biggest richest idiot on the planet. It should be a lot cheaper to just buy massive solar (wait, couldn't he just make them himself with his tesla roofs?) and batteries (which Tesla also makes) and put Datacenter in some dessert and put fiber to that place... But it seems he needs some angle to push all this necessary investment into something? Are we now in th…

I dunno if it's that clear cut. In space with a shadowless orbit you get 5x more solar energy per day than the sunniest place on earth. And it's always on, so you don't need batteries. Also, the lack of gravity and weather means that the structures can be a lot more brittle - I imagine something like a gpu on the back of a large thin film solar panel, where the panel also acts as heatsink. Could be pretty cheap!

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