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Starship V3

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Re: Starship V3

#591

Post by panick21_ »

svantana wrote: post #316
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…

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!

So you are comparing putting up slightly more solar panels and some batteries, both things that are mass produced commodity with re-engineering the whole computing ecosystem and how data-centers have been done for decades, transporting them on the most expensive known transportation system and then operating it in a way where you need specially educated experts.

So my bet would be that just ordering a bunch of sodium batteries and a bunch of solar panels (or you know using a source of energy that is constant) is cheaper then going threw all the effort of putting things into space.

I have been following everything space for decades, and not once have I thought, wow putting super complex engineering things into space so easy and you should do it for things that have an easy alternative on earth.

Re: Starship V3

#592

Post by panick21_ »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #524
jeltz wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your comment is just appeal to authority?

it's an appeal to net worth and the argument that you don't become the richest person on the planet by being a massive idiot that everyone likes to paint him out as. he's problematic and sucks but he's not an idiot (in business)

I agree with you but he has also made many claims that are false. About hyperloop (where he also said it was validated by SpaceX engineers) but it turns out the original paper doesn't actually work. But Musk didn't try to do hyperloop of course so its kind of irrelevant.

The thing is, this is a massive expansion of AI investment. And AI has been the thing where Musk has failed consistently the most. Nothing he has done around AI indicates he has some special genius or insight.

The thing he had success with were things that were known to be good ideas, reusable rockets, electric cars and space based LEO communications. What he did is he brought together the finances and build a and lead a team to execute on them.

However, we are far away from that with xAI and Space data-centers.

Re: Starship V3

#593

Post by panick21_ »

geertj wrote: post #388
elbasti wrote: post #166

Your daily reminder that there is no scenario in which putting data centers in space is easier than putting them in Texas, or Morocco, or literally anywhere else. The only problem that "data centers in space" solves is the problem of trying to scale a rocket company where the potential demand for rocket launches is simply not that big.

The problem putting them in space solves is the approx 5X more solar energy without needing batteries for day and night cycles, along with some smaller wins due to less structural support needed due to microgravity.

Structural support. A few sheets of steel is what we are trying to safe money on?

So the money we are saving is commodity solar, commodity steel and community battery (or any other form of power).

And instead of those things we add, insane engineering complexity, insane complex heating, insanely complex maintenance or standing backup, insanely expensive transportation and insanely complex operations and insanely complex communications?

Re: Starship V3

#594

Post by lopsotronic »

dotancohen wrote: post #580
lopsotronic wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how you define "permanent" but the closed ecological systems (CES) problem is nowhere near solved. Best case all the Martians get eaten alive by their own skin fungus and/or bacteria in a generation or two. There'll be a collapse in the personal or macro biome - biological systems have Kalmagorov complexity in a vertical like direction. Shorter term, drawing from actual ISS problems, you get really weird a…

So there is a problem to be solved. Great! The history of human spaceflight is pretty much: Problem -> Difficult to find solution -> Solution leads to better spaceflight -> Solution leads to better life for humans on Earth. Then repeat that cycle for each new problem. Think of the new medicine and hospital protocols that are waiting to be developed as biologists explore the solution to this problem.

Couldn't agree more. But I'd recommend solving the problem before shooting ten men and ten women into the Martian regolith forever and telling them to make babies.

Alternatively, it's not the scale of problem you try and solve fifteen timeslipped minutes and (at least) eighteen months away. We're not even sure what the shape of a solution even looks like, apart from "Generic Future Technology Tree Numbers 4 through 90". Mastery of bioengineering would probably fix it, but it would need to be desktop science, like 3d printing. We are not anywhere near that - mostly because we don't have things like "generic bioreactors" that can grow organisms like a universal womb/seedbed/strata/media.

I recognize human advancement comes with sacrifice. But human advancement also comes with prudent decisions like "don't built the village in the lava".

Re: Starship V3

#595

Post by Zardoz84 »

db48x wrote: post #487
Fordec wrote: post #123

The thing which is seemingly missing from this is their current largest hurdle emerging from the V2 testing. The heat shields keep failing. I guess the focus is going to be on getting stuff up, rather than back down. Thus the Starlink and data center plays, not human space exploration.

I think you’re overstating the problem. All of the tests flown so far were deliberately crippled just to see how much they could get away with. They installed fewer tiles than were really needed, leaving gaps in large surfaces and even leaving the hinge areas of the flaps unprotected. The resulting damage was spectacular and terrible for reusability, but the ships still functioned. That actually bodes well for human…

> Losing a tile crippled the Space Shuttle

Losing a tile on the most damage sensible area of the shuttle.

Re: Starship V3

#596

Post by Zardoz84 »

geertj wrote: post #388
elbasti wrote: post #166

Your daily reminder that there is no scenario in which putting data centers in space is easier than putting them in Texas, or Morocco, or literally anywhere else. The only problem that "data centers in space" solves is the problem of trying to scale a rocket company where the potential demand for rocket launches is simply not that big.

The problem putting them in space solves is the approx 5X more solar energy without needing batteries for day and night cycles, along with some smaller wins due to less structural support needed due to microgravity.

Good luck with heat management.

Re: Starship V3

#597

Post by NetMageSCW »

mapt wrote: post #538
m4rtink wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlinks are in low enough orbit to passively decay in less than 5 years, that really can't meaningfully contribute to a Kessler syndrome. Chinese mega constellations on higher orbits & their spent stages left in space are a bigger issues. Still in case it got going & made higher orbits unusable, starlink would likely still work just fine on the lower self-cleaning orbits, not to mention using a partial (and hopeful…

A recent paper came out calculating that it would take two days of lights out at SpaceX headquarters for the whole constellation to shred itself, it was already so reliant on avoidance maneuvers. SpaceX immediately responded by lowering its target orbits by 70km, the maximum it could legally do without renegotiating formally. When a high orbit develops Kessler Syndrome, the billions of pieces of debris rain down on l…

Incorrect. It was two days for one collision to occur. Most of the debris would then decay in a few weeks.

Stop trying to make Kessler Syndrome a thing. It was never a thing, it won’t be a thing, it will never be a thing.

Re: Starship V3

#598

Post by NetMageSCW »

msk-lywenn wrote: post #453
Valakas_ wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They didn’t build Tesla, they started Tesla. Without Musk, they would have failed.

Re: Starship V3

#599

Post by damnitbuilds »

adastra22 wrote: post #552
EnergyAmy wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's one of the better criticisms of the book, that's a pretty good recommendation for the book. The article author clearly just doesn't like their dream being shattered.

As I said, "doesn't get it." Neither the Weinersmiths nor you seem to understand the motivations of people that actually want to settle Mars. EDIT: It was just pointed out to me that the meat of Peter's review (parts 2 & 3) are paywalled. What I linked to was more like a summary for a review. Sorry. Space fan: We're going to make a city on Mars! Weinersmith: It's going to be hard. There is no air, the ground is toxic…

Non-paywalled Part 2 which is a criticism of the Weinersmiths' more interesting, technical arguments.

  https://archive.ph/x3JDR
BTW, what sort of moron votes down a factual comment like mine that started this ?

Whoever you are, fuck you. You are making this place worse and shame on the mods that allow you to do this.

Re: Starship V3

#600

Post by damnitbuilds »

sschueller wrote: post #383
damnitbuilds wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon is smart and employs many smart people. If the thermodynamics didn't work, they would know. I do wonder if shielding the multi-billion transistor GPUs will be a difficult.

Like the hyperloop?...

The problem with that was not based on physics, like the thermodynamics of datacenters in space.
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