631–640 of 667 posts
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> Unless it manages to massively eat into mobile network market share Several mobile carriers are already using them for backend of remote towers.
And to add to this: They still have packet loss when they switch the satelites every 1-4 minutes.
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For something relevant? Why would they do this? Dark fibers is an easy thing and you need to put power to these remote towers anyway.
You need a cell tower every 20 miles or so, less for a performant one. There's not dark fiber at that density in remote regions (remote is, by definition, lacking infrastructure). There's a better chance of power, and for the cases there's not, solar/battery is fine for a cell tower, especially one designed for lower power remote installations.
Starlink antenna needs a lot more energy and has a high montly cost.
That shouldn't be very economically for long.
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> Its a good read. I'd encourage you to read it and come to your own conclusion on your question. Personally, they earned my trust but other members of our book club did not agree. I'm not saying I'm dismissing the arguments for that reason, at all, to be clear! Thanks for the recommendation. > Space is very very unforgiving and they ultimately conclude humanity is better served focusing our resources here on earth f…
> glad the American taxpayer is doing it. For Starship development specifically, the American taxpayer is mostly not doing it; Starlink customers worldwide are contributing most, if I understand correctly.
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> Its a good read. I'd encourage you to read it and come to your own conclusion on your question. Personally, they earned my trust but other members of our book club did not agree. I'm not saying I'm dismissing the arguments for that reason, at all, to be clear! Thanks for the recommendation. > Space is very very unforgiving and they ultimately conclude humanity is better served focusing our resources here on earth f…
why do you assume we wouldn't have seen value in satellites if we didn't see value in going to the moon (or mars)? There's clearly an extraordinary value in satellites from a military perspective, for instance to enable spying. Heck, Hubble directly benefited from the work that went into spy satellites and NASA was afterwards gifted 2 uneeded spy satellites to use for scientific exploration (1 is (was? as in finished…
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> Its a good read. I'd encourage you to read it and come to your own conclusion on your question. Personally, they earned my trust but other members of our book club did not agree. I'm not saying I'm dismissing the arguments for that reason, at all, to be clear! Thanks for the recommendation. > Space is very very unforgiving and they ultimately conclude humanity is better served focusing our resources here on earth f…
> If we hadn't gone to space at all and focused on Earth first we wouldn't have GPS I'm not sure if you're actually suggesting it or not with this statement, but we didn't need manned space flight to have GPS. We started launching satellite-based navigation systems a little bit before Yuri went to space, though the system wasn't in fully operational service until after a few human spaceflights.
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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 do…
"claims that are false" is such a broad statement and applies to basically 99% of business leaders, and probably 100% of anyone who's a household name. Elon gets that reputation 50x worse than, say, Larry Ellison, but only because when Elon says "revenues are up 12.5%" and it's actually 12.4%, there are 800 headlines the next day that he's lying and misleading investors and the SEC should investigate. in the long ter…
But Musk was the one who had the skills, guts, personality - and sometimes luck - to bring these things to reality.
His existence has greatly benefited mankind and that remains true even if you hate the man.
He is The George Michael, while the rest of us are Andrew Ridgeleys.
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But are they doing work internally that generates heat? Genuine question.
They are. But only as much heat as they get from the solar radiation that's hitting them anyway. Exactly that amount.
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If it’s not that hard, then perhaps someone can just point to the simple math of how it would work. It’s not like only idiots who know nothing about space are pointing out the cooling issue: https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...
The problem is, that person is deeply underinformed. For instance: "you don't lose that much power through the atmosphere" Assuming you can point the orbiting panels at the sun and remain direct, you lose 80% of your power through the atmosphere (from angle and day/night). On the ground you lose 25% even if your panel is directly below the sun pointed exactly at it, which is never the case in many latitudes. And of c…
When people say "you don't lose that much power on the ground", it's in the context of cost.
So a solar panel is 5x more efficient in space. You solve that in the ground by buying 5x more solar panels.
Solar panels cost -- rounding up -- $10/kg.
Lifting things into space costs -- rounding down -- $1000/kg.
For the same amount of money, you can put 100X solar panels into a ground based array as a space based array. You don't lose that much power on the ground. You aren't overcoming that difference because solar panels are more efficient in space.
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Don’t get me wrong, space data centers will happen, but as usual, Elon’s timeline is total bullshit.
It's frustrating to talk to someone about this and get "they need to address these points" (which frankly, they have addressed) and then get "this will happen of course" when I point out that it will in fact happen. It feels like moving the goalposts to avoid saying "thanks for informing me of something new."
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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.
Every collision increases the chance of additional collisions.
"Weeks"? SpaceX is aiming to be within the guideline of 25 years for the intact spacecraft, with solar panels unfurled. The want at minimum five years of business operations out of it. Half a spacecraft is still going to be decades (if not centuries if they lose the panels), and small chunks of spacecraft years.