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xAI joins SpaceX

spacex.com

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Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#521

Post by caust1c »

raincole wrote: post #475
eduardogarza wrote: post #435

From the Big Short (movie) Jared Vennett (narration): "In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating agency's executives went to jail. The SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivatives industries." "Just kidding. Banks took the money the American people gave them, and they used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby…

I really don't know what you're trying to say. From your comment alone the conclusion I drew was that we should spend more on the industries that makes physical instead of financial products, such as SpaceX.

The sequence of events: Elon doing a leveraged buyout of X, then xAI funding, then debt transfers to X, then the xAI–X stock deal. Now the proposed SpaceX–xAI merger appears to have shifted X’s financial burden from Musk personally toward xAI investors and, potentially, future SpaceX shareholders.

This is speculative, of course, but yeah seems likely.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#522

Post by theowaway »

Fogest wrote: post #495
eduardogarza wrote: post #435

From the Big Short (movie) Jared Vennett (narration): "In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating agency's executives went to jail. The SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivatives industries." "Just kidding. Banks took the money the American people gave them, and they used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby…

I feel like without adding some commentary with these quotes this comment lacks enough info to see how it relates to the linked article.

[flagged]

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#523

Post by taurath »

nickff wrote: post #477
taurath wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t even have a habitable structure in space when the ISS falls, there is no world in which space datacenters are a thing in the next 10, I’d argue even 30 years. People really need to ground themselves in reality. Edit: okay Tiangong - but that is not a data center.

Who is “we”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station

Good point. Still a long, long way from data centers.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#524

Post by crote »

billti wrote: post #506

> Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year Excuse my naive physics, but is there a point at which if you take enough mass off of earth and launch it into space, it would have a measurable effect on earth's orbit? (Or if the mass is still tethered to earth via gravity, is there no net effect?)

Earth weighs about 5972200000000000000000000 kg. They are claiming to plan to launch ~5000000000 kg / year. That's 8x10^-14 %. You'd need some pretty accurate instruments to tell the difference.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#525

Post by taurath »

TheBlight wrote: post #499
taurath wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t even have a habitable structure in space when the ISS falls, there is no world in which space datacenters are a thing in the next 10, I’d argue even 30 years. People really need to ground themselves in reality. Edit: okay Tiangong - but that is not a data center.

Ok then short SpaceX stock when it IPOs.

What does stock price have to do with anything?

That someone could put a data center in space for the price of 100 years of eliminating world hunger doesn’t mean shit.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#526

Post by sltkr »

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).

Fortunately there are no downsides to launching solar cells into space that would offset those gains.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#527

Post by tbrownaw »

FloorEgg wrote: post #256
alangibson wrote: post #89

Either this is a straight up con, or Musk found a glitch in physics. It's extremely difficult to keep things cold in space.

Setting aside the possibility it's window dressing for a financial bailout, there would be two ways compute in space makes sense: 1) new technology improves vacuum heat radiation efficiency 2) new technology reduces waste heat generation from compute All the takes I've seen have been focused on #1, but I'm starting to wonder about #2... Specifically spintronics and photonic chips.

> new technology improves vacuum heat radiation efficiency

Isn't this fixed by blackbody radiation equations?

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#528

Post by spikels »

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…

Context missing. This is in reference to a vision the (distant?) future where the satellites are manufactured in factories on the Moon and sent into space with mass drivers.

Full paragraph quote comes from:

> While launching AI satellites from Earth is the immediate focus, Starship’s capabilities will also enable operations on other worlds. Thanks to advancements like in-space propellant transfer, Starship will be capable of landing massive amounts of cargo on the Moon. Once there, it will be possible to establish a permanent presence for scientific and manufacturing pursuits. Factories on the Moon can take advantage of lunar resources to manufacture satellites and deploy them further into space. By using an electromagnetic mass driver and lunar manufacturing, 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. >

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#529

Post by chr15m »

jupp0r wrote: post #415
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…

See Dyson Sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

Dyson's paper was literally written in jest.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#530

Post by fooker »

momoschili wrote: post #503
fooker wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. China made 1.8 TW of solar cells in 2025. The raw materials required to make these are incredibly abundant, we make as much as we need.

you realize the factor of 2 you introduce doesn't meaningfully change the order of magnitude that the previous poster is implying right?

You missed the point.

We can make ten or hundred times the number of solar cells we make right now, we just don't have a reason to. The technology is fairly ancient unless you want to compete on efficiency, and the raw materials abundant.

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