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Starship V3

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Re: Starship V3

#461

Post by UltraSane »

AntiUSAbah wrote: post #294

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…

Musk isn't an idiot, he is an utterly shameless conman who will tell any lie however often he needs to to keep share prices high.

Re: Starship V3

#462

Post by eagerpace »

inglor_cz wrote: post #246
eagerpace wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to think, it wasn’t that long ago competitors we still using old Russian engines for their domestic rockets. Brilliant work to get back to leadership in this domain.

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

They’re amazing too. That’s my point. The legacy launch providers were doing zero innovation, limping along shuttle era designs and literally buying the most critical parts from our biggest competitor. The people who hate Elon have no concept how revolutionary the Merlin engine was given this context. It doesn’t matter if SpaceX is successful or not, they revived the entire US space industry. That’s what matters.

Re: Starship V3

#463

Post by ghtbircshotbe »

arjie wrote: post #157

Incredible to get insight into the new things they're trying. Back in the day of the old Space Race this kind of thing was impossible and now an enthusiast can just follow along as incredible feats of engineering are performed. Great stuff! I imagine at least some of the reason to chase the AI datacenters in space thing is because Starship is "too capable" if it succeeds. It makes available a technology that does not…

If a decision is smart due to having access to non-public information, that is more a question of ignorance than intelligence.

I can think of all sorts of successful decisions that would definitely be stupid for a normal person to try, due to lack of connections, access to money, high risk, etc.

And maybe to expose my own lack of intelligence, I've always thought eg Robinhood was incredibly dumb. I never in a million years would have thought of the idea of creating an investing app, since there are already many of them, from far more reliable and trustworthy sources. And yet Robinhood has made its founders billions.

Re: Starship V3

#464

Post by luke5441 »

geertj wrote: post #391
luke5441 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what often gets confused is people saying it isn't viable with "it is not physically possible". It is physically possible, but it won't have positive ROI so it is not viable. If you have a paper/post doing the calculations for positive ROI, I'd be all ears. It can even have the optimistic Elon assumptions about price of mass to orbit.

I don’t think people are confused between the two. What’s happening is that drive by objections have no real way to assess viability. That calculation you ask for has line items in it that greatly depend on engineering optimizations that, unless you work in the field, are hard to estimate accurately.

On those line items make the most optimistic assumption. E.g. use Elons Starship cost to orbit. Assume useful GPU lifetime of 6+ years. Assume max physical possible radiators etc.

Re: Starship V3

#465

Post by avmich »

avmich wrote: post #146
wahnfrieden wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The physics degree is a deception and perhaps fabricated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35594076 (and it was a BA not BSc though that matters less) And the Stanford admittance was for materials science, not physics as he lies about

I agree, but the idea that he doesn't have skills is still incorrect.

Correction: I agree he got into Stanford for material sciences. Still can not be characterized as having no skills.

Re: Starship V3

#466

Post by adrian_b »

geertj wrote: post #376
AntiUSAbah wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not always on. Its only 'always' on if you would orbit the sun which starlink can't do, it has to orbit the earth. This only works in a certain constelation which would create a halo around our planet, without clear understanding what even would do. The more power you consume, the more power you need to dissipate. These constelations wouldn't be small at all. It would also take a interesting solution to be able t…

The always on orbit exists and is called a dawn-dusk Sun synchronous orbit. It is an orbit that is always above the terminator (line between night and day) where it can face the Sun 100% of the time. This orbit has to rotate about a degree every day to follow the terminator as the earth orbits the Sun. It uses the equatorial bulge of the earth to achieve that rotation without have to spend rocket fuel. It is really q…

But the slots on such Sun-synchronous orbits are limited and many applications want them.

A few datacenters could occupy some slots, but it would be difficult to accept a large number of datacenters obstructing such orbits.

Re: Starship V3

#467

Post by saberience »

randallsquared wrote: post #452
saberience wrote: post #404

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.

Ok, how many Starship launches have there been so far? Ok, 11 tests, of which only one has sent a dummy payload. Of the 11 tests, you can say that the latest one was closest to a final (sort of) working version. So we're still very early in the Starship launch program.

Let's do the math on "millions of datacenters" worth of launches.

In fact, let's try and do it for a single 50k GPU datacenter:

50,000 GPUs at GB200 density = 695 NVL72 racks at 1360 kg (1.36 tonnes) each, so the racks are roughly 950 tonnes.

GPUS = 950 tons

85MW of power needed for the GPUs. Latest solar power panels give roughly 120-150 watts per kg. Let's be generous and say 150 W/kg. So 85 MW / 150 W/kg = 570 tonnes of solar arrays

Power = 570 tons

Thermal management (radiators). Real space radiators are around 12 kg/m² for a heavy deployable radiator and its support structure, though ISS radiators are 8 kg per square meter, or 2.75 kg/m² if we only consider the exposed panels. (Using 8 kg/m² for an estimate). 200,000 m² × 8 kg/m² = 1,600 tonnes of radiators

Plus working fluid (ammonia or similar), pumps, manifolds, redundant loops: 150 tonnes.

Radiators Total: 1750 tons.

Structure, Propulsion, Comms, Avionics, Attitude Control Systems, plus Margin. Hard to estimate but conservatively several hundred tons extra. (Actual spacecraft programs always add roughly 20-30% mass margin).

Extras: 750 tons. (being very conservative).

Total = 950+570+1750+750 = 4020 tons.

And note, this is for a single 50k GPU datacenter with all the numbers being skewed to most optimistic.

That would be 40 (!!!) Starship launches. So far we've had 11 launches total with none being successful (100% successful I mean). Each of those launches currently costs 90M dollars. And note, we are assuming a fully working 100 ton payload for Starship of which none of the launches so far have been close to at all.

So our full datacenter to space would cost 3.6B dollars (at current SpaceX prices)... (just to launch it, not to actually buy the equipment). And realistically would cost far more than that...

Note, this is for (by today's standards) a small datacenter with only 50k GPUs and I haven't included any testing, R&D costs, costs of "maintenance", station keeping, replacements, etc etc.

Let alone the question of huge amounts more satellites in orbit, risks of space junk, Kessler syndrome, etc etc.

Re: Starship V3

#468

Post by drivingmenuts »

bvcp wrote: post #357
drivingmenuts wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty normal for Elon: big promises, generate interest and funding, then fail to deliver. But by that time, he’s got his trillion-dollar paycheck and is working on his next scheme. We used to eliminate Nazis, not invest in them.

elon musk isnt a nazi

Granted that he is not a member of the NSDAP, but he does support and encourage hard right-wing groups which attempt to fulfill roughly the same mission. His actions certainly meet the more modern definition of nazi than they do any other political description. While he has considerable wealth, his value as a human being is near-zero, in my opinion.

Re: Starship V3

#469

Post by saalweachter »

geertj wrote: post #376
AntiUSAbah wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not always on. Its only 'always' on if you would orbit the sun which starlink can't do, it has to orbit the earth. This only works in a certain constelation which would create a halo around our planet, without clear understanding what even would do. The more power you consume, the more power you need to dissipate. These constelations wouldn't be small at all. It would also take a interesting solution to be able t…

The always on orbit exists and is called a dawn-dusk Sun synchronous orbit. It is an orbit that is always above the terminator (line between night and day) where it can face the Sun 100% of the time. This orbit has to rotate about a degree every day to follow the terminator as the earth orbits the Sun. It uses the equatorial bulge of the earth to achieve that rotation without have to spend rocket fuel. It is really q…

Aren't dusk-dawn orbits already the most crowded orbital space with the most orbital debris?

Re: Starship V3

#470

Post by avmich »

arijun wrote: post #270
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #252

Quick update for the folks passionate about space things (since this thread is full of unrelated comments): V3 is their first Starship family big upgrade, containing lots of learnings from previous tests, and the big engine upgrades. V3 engines are the first iteration of a production engine, with lots of sensors and auxiliary systems integrated into the engine itself. Besides the improvements in thrust, they've strea…

> moved a lot of stuff "inside" the engine The level that they managed to fit everything inside of a simple-looking package was so high that the CEO of ULA (the Boeing/Lockheed Martin rocket company) thought they were lying when they first showed pictures [1]. [1] https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/08/40279896/spacex-presiden...

I still don't see TVC there. I think Shotwell was exaggerating.
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