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xAI joins SpaceX

spacex.com

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Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#51

Post by alex_young »

googleme wrote: post #38
baggachipz wrote: post #3

Well surely this acquisition is above board. Nothing funny going on here, just good old business as usual.

It's widely reported that Musk is a majority shareholder of xAI and the controlling shareholder of SpaceX (close to 80% of voting shares). Not surprising that he would be looking to consolidate ownership under one entity especially if he perceives significant synergies (i.e., data centres in space).

Data centers in space are a hilariously bad idea. Where would the heat go? This idea is like the opposite of liquid cooling.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#52

Post by [deleted] »

googleme wrote: post #38
baggachipz wrote: post #3

Well surely this acquisition is above board. Nothing funny going on here, just good old business as usual.

It's widely reported that Musk is a majority shareholder of xAI and the controlling shareholder of SpaceX (close to 80% of voting shares). Not surprising that he would be looking to consolidate ownership under one entity especially if he perceives significant synergies (i.e., data centres in space).

[deleted]

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#54

Post by dwood_dev »

jsheard wrote: post #6

> Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling. You know what's even harder to cool? > Orbital Data Centers

I really would like to see a cost and cooling breakdown. I just can't see how you can do radiative cooling on the scales required, not to mention hardening.

I thought this was a troll by Elon, now I'm leaning towards not. I don't see how whatever you build being dramatically faster and cheaper to do on land, even 100% grid independent with solar and battery. Even if the launch cost was just fuel, everything else that goes into putting data centers in space dwarfs the cost of 4x solar plus battery.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#55

Post by newyankee »

googleme wrote: post #38
baggachipz wrote: post #3

Well surely this acquisition is above board. Nothing funny going on here, just good old business as usual.

It's widely reported that Musk is a majority shareholder of xAI and the controlling shareholder of SpaceX (close to 80% of voting shares). Not surprising that he would be looking to consolidate ownership under one entity especially if he perceives significant synergies (i.e., data centres in space).

I have never understood how Data centers in space ever make economic sense, the payload, latency and many other issues make it difficult at least for the immediate needs

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#56

Post by kemotep »

If Musk and SpaceX are serious about putting 1 million datacenter satellites into space, then they are not serious about Mars.

You cannot simultaneously build and launch 10’s of thousands of Starships to deliver 1 million tons of equipment and supplies bound to Mars while also committing to launching 10’s of thousands of Starships to orbit full of satellites.

They would need to quadruple their launch rate, and half of those launches would be Starships bound for Mars, the vast majority of which would never return.

How many Falcon9’s have ever been built? It is incredible to say you can build that many rockets and use up that much fuel on any reasonable time scale. You might as well say the Tesla Roadster version 3 will be a Single Stage to Orbit rocket car.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#57

Post by jopsen »

> In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale.

I never questioned it.

Space is also extremely cold, and if it's as dense as Musk cooling won't be an issue.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#58

Post by bko »

baggachipz wrote: post #3

Well surely this acquisition is above board. Nothing funny going on here, just good old business as usual.

What's funny? Do you think the investors are against this? The investor's aren't idiots. I imagine the typical investor in Elon Musk's companies would approve of this sort of thing. So what's the problem? Besides, its a private company with Musk as majority shareholder in both. That's the beauty of private companies, you can just do things.

I wish more companies were private and ambitious. I'm tired of companies like Apple making marginal spec bumps to their phones and milking the same products for decades

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#59

Post by UltraSane »

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.

Merging SpaceX with a public company like Tesla would create a lot of issues for the classified projects SpaceX does.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#60

Post by fabian2k »

andsoitis wrote: post #21
baggachipz wrote: post #3

Well surely this acquisition is above board. Nothing funny going on here, just good old business as usual.

> Well surely this acquisition is above board. What makes you think it isn’t?

There's an epic conflict of interest here with Musk owning most of both companies. And they're in entirely separate fields, there is no plausible synergy here to be gained.
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