Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

xAI joins SpaceX

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

871–880 of 1001 posts

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#871

Post by kergonath »

Rover222 wrote: post #584
rainsford wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also shouldn't overlook the fact that the proposal entirely glosses over the implication of the alternative benefits we might realize if humanity achieved the incredible engineering and technical capacity necessary to make this version of space AI happen. Think about it. Elon conjures up a vision of the future where we've managed to increase our solar cell manufacturing capacity by two whole orders of magnitude an…

You really can't grasp that GPUs scaled at this level is the most ambitious thing possible? That it will be the foundation of unfathomable technological innovation?

"In space" is the new blockchain.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#872

Post by sbt »

"If you mix raisins with turds, they're still turds" - Charlie Munger

Another consequence of US NatSec being gradually privatized is that once your income stream derives mostly from government spending, it becomes an imperative to influence politics to secure that stream. Yet some of these companies will remain vulnerable to shifting political winds.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#873

Post by TrackerFF »

999900000999 wrote: post #689
n_u wrote: post #463

A 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…

It's much easier to find a country or jurisdiction that doesn't care about a bunch of data centers vs launching them into space. I don't get why we aren't building mixed use buildings, maybe the first floor can be retail and restaurants, the next two floors can be data centers, and then above that apartments.

I think data centers, in the areas where they are most relevant (cold climates), are going to face an uphill battle in the near future.

Where I live, Norway, we've seen that:

1) The data centers don't generate the numbers of jobs they promise. Sure, during building phase, they do generate a lot of business, but during operations and maintenance phase, not so much. Typically these companies will promise hundreds of long-term jobs, while in reality that number is only a fraction.

2) They are extremely power hungry, to the point where households can expect to see their utility bill go up a non-trivial amount. That's for a single data center. In the colder climate areas where data centers are being promoted, power infrastructure might not be able to handle the centers (something seen in northern Norway, for example) at a larger scale, due to decades of stagnation.

3) The environmental effects have come more under scrutiny. And, unfortunately for the companies owning data centers, pretty much all cold-climate western countries have stringent environmental laws.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#874

Post by dartharva »

bgnn wrote: post #800
n_u wrote: post #463

A 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…

The real reason is, Elon has SpaceX and xAI. He can create an illusion of synergy and orders of magnitude advancements to boost the market cap and pocket all the money. He realized long time ago you don't need to deliver to play the market cap game, in fact it's better if you are selling a story far in the future rather than a something you can deliver now.

What'd be the point of inflating market caps like this when it's obvious they'll crash the moment the owner tries to liquidate any of it before the promises are kept?

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#875

Post by cesaref »

Just out of interest, what's the current 'state of the art' for a chip that is hardened to survive launch and any length of time in orbit?

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#876

Post by mosquitobiten »

jmyeet wrote: post #644
lugao wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only people who never interacted with data center reliability think it's doable to maintain servers with no human intervention.

There are a class of people who may seem smart until they start talking about a subject you know about. Hank Green is a great example of this. For many on HN, Elon buying Twitter was a wake up call because he suddenly started talking about software and servers and data centers and reliability and a ton of people with experience with those things were like "oh... this guy's an idiot". Data centers in space are exactly…

for me trying to apply some liquid TIM on a CPU in a space station in a big ass suit would be a total nightmare, maybe robots could make it bearable but the racks would get greassy fast from many failed attempts

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#877

Post by creshal »

cesaref wrote: post #875

Just out of interest, what's the current 'state of the art' for a chip that is hardened to survive launch and any length of time in orbit?

Depends on a lot of factors. LEO has high drag, but good radiation shielding, so if you've got a low enough orbit you can use most embedded hardware but need to compensate with bigger thrusters and bigger fuel tanks if you want it to survive "any length of time" without burning up from atmospheric drag.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#878

Post by mr_toad »

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?)

The Sun masses so much more than the Earth that the Earth’s mass is effectively irrelevant to its orbit.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#879

Post by thefounder »

dartharva wrote: post #874
bgnn wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is, Elon has SpaceX and xAI. He can create an illusion of synergy and orders of magnitude advancements to boost the market cap and pocket all the money. He realized long time ago you don't need to deliver to play the market cap game, in fact it's better if you are selling a story far in the future rather than a something you can deliver now.

What'd be the point of inflating market caps like this when it's obvious they'll crash the moment the owner tries to liquidate any of it before the promises are kept?

I think you can get loans in the stock. That’s how “most people” live(and die)

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#880

Post by spacecadet »

rainsford wrote: post #548
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…

We also shouldn't overlook the fact that the proposal entirely glosses over the implication of the alternative benefits we might realize if humanity achieved the incredible engineering and technical capacity necessary to make this version of space AI happen. Think about it. Elon conjures up a vision of the future where we've managed to increase our solar cell manufacturing capacity by two whole orders of magnitude an…

"The problem is that this is both wildly overambitious and somehow incredibly myopic at the same time."

Im sorry, but this is literally every single figurehead in society today.

Post reply on HN