I don't see the demand for space being there, OSS is driving costs down and there are still plenty of hardware and algorithmic optimizations we haven't deployed yet.
xAI joins SpaceX
531–540 of 1001 posts
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starship has a large number of critical milestones coming: Can it land and quickly reuse the upper stage? If not, it can't make refueling flights without building a dozen or two starships. Can it carry the full specified payload? If not, it can't even try to refuel in orbit. If it can't refuel in orbit, it can't go beyond earth orbit. Etc. Everything has to go right or it will be irrelevant before it works.
> Everything has to go right or it will be irrelevant before it works. Starship is not all of SpaceX. Saying, maybe because one hates Musk, that SpaceX is going to become irrelevant is wishful thinking. In 2025 SpaceX launched more rockets into space than the entire world ever sent in a year up to 2022, something crazy like that. Then out of, what, 14 000 active satellites in space more than half have been launched b…
> In 2025 SpaceX launched more rockets into space than the entire world ever sent in a year up to 2022, something crazy like that.
Not just that, the cost of each rocket launch is drastically cheaper than all of its competitors costs.
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#533> 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…
Help me understand something. We make 1 TW of cells per year but we're struggling with bringing 1 GW consuming data centers online?
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#534From 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.
You don't see how the common thread is Elon Musk buying out his own businesses, largely on the basis of overinflated stocks and corporate welfare?
It's baffling that the market has stayed so irrational because of Musk. It will collapse because of him.
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#535A former NASA engineer with a PhD in space electronics who later worked at Google for 10 years wrote an article about why datacenters in space are very technically challenging: https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri... I don't have any specialized knowledge of the physics but I saw an article suggesting the real reason for the push to build them in space is to hedge against political pushback pr…
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.
I don't think any of the companies that say they are working on space data centers intend them to be habitable.
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#536From 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.
This merger smells like a bubble. Servers in space? They don't make enough to cover costs here on earth. Americans will be forced to bail this mess up because we need Falcon 9, Starship one, etc.
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#537Disgusting.
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#538A former NASA engineer with a PhD in space electronics who later worked at Google for 10 years wrote an article about why datacenters in space are very technically challenging: https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri... I don't have any specialized knowledge of the physics but I saw an article suggesting the real reason for the push to build them in space is to hedge against political pushback pr…
"Technically challenging", a nice way to say "impossible"
Just like rockets landing themselves
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#539SpaceX 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.
Why? Let it fail. Bring back NASA.
You want to bring back the biggest loser? NASA kept missing deadlines for 30 years
Re: xAI joins SpaceX
#540From 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.
without having watched the Big Short or having read the article, my first impression from the quote is "Megacorporations are failing dramatically, and the billionaires at their helm are freely doing financial gymnastics to pull the covers over the eyes of shareholders, while gaming the system to fully circumvent taxes and regulation -- the people with the power to do anything about it (legislators and regulators) watch idly (maybe profiting), the oligarchs make off like bandits despite copious failures, and the end consumer/taxpayer is either robbed or clueless this is going on, but most likely both, when there was a world where accountability could have been had and the common man was treated better."
the article headline immediately screams "financial gymnastics" to me so the rest followed from the quote.