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

911–920 of 1001 posts

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#911

Post by hwillis »

IvyMike wrote: post #168
dahinds wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really true, though? The ISS does it with radiators that are ~1/2 the area of its solar panels, and both should scale linearly with power?

I don't pretend to understand the thermodynamics of all of this to do an actual calculation, but note that the ISS spends half its time in the shadow of the earth, which these satellites would not do.

The earth is actually a pretty big heat source in space. Solar radiation is a point source, so you can orient parallel to the rays and avoid it. The earth takes up about half the sky and is unavoidable. The earth also radiates infrared, the same as your radiators, so you can't reflect it. Solar light is in the visible spectrum so you can paint your radiators to be reflective in visible wavelengths but emissive in infrared.

Low satellites are still cooler in the Earth's shadow than they would be in unshadowed orbits, but higher orbits are cooler than either. Not where you'd want to put millions of datacenters though.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#912

Post by Fuzzbit »

With my cynical hat on, this move is to protect xAI from any issues with Tesla having peaked, and to maximise the value in SpaceX ahead of its IPO.

I'd also question whether a species deserves a future in the cosmos when we can't even care for the people here on earth, especially when the person leading the charge thinks its ok to shut down USAID which according to published figures will result in millions of deaths of the worlds poorest people to hunger, AIDS, Malaria etc.

Tech bro psychopaths need to check themselves.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#914

Post by jonners00 »

esseph wrote: post #582
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…

This is such a hypebeast paragraph. Datacenters in space are a TERRIBLE idea. Figure out how to get rid of the waste heat and get back to me.

Heat exchanger melts salts, salts boil off? Some kind of potential in there to use evaporants for attitude/altitude correction. Spitballing. Once your use case also has a business case, scope to innovate grows.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#915

Post by NewLogic »

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…

Has anyone done the math on how much liquid methane and oxygen this would take to launch on Starship? Seems like an impossibility alone without digging into the numbers.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#917

Post by fhd2 »

Zigurd wrote: post #102
zeptonix wrote: post #9

Seems like a great way to play games with moving money around. Come up with a "valuation" and then "acquire".

It worked for his Twitter co-investors. I guess they overlap enough with Xai investors for them to think it's more clever than it is a rip off.

Well, wouldn't you be on board?

1. Does xAI seem more valuable than X?

2. Does SpaceX seem more valuable than xAI+X?

Not sure a lot of people would say "no" to either of these questions.

The only other question that I think is worth asking for investors, is how much stock in the acquiring company they get for their stocks in the acquired company. If the valuation of the acquired company in the deal is... optimistic enough, that seems like a no brainer.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#918

Post by bydlocoder »

somenameforme wrote: post #737
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…

A lot of great inventions we now take for granted initially came with little motivation other than being able to kill each other more effectively. GPS, radar, jet engines, drones, super glue, microwaves, canned food, computers, even the internet. Contrary to the narrative of the internet being about sharing science, ARPANET was pushed by the DoD as a means of maintaining comms during nuclear war. It was then adopted…

The only purely military thing is rockets and everything space related, there's just no way private businesses would've poured so much money into it

Computers and internet being storage, processing and communication systems are clearly useful for civilian purposes

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#919

Post by dcchambers »

This is how Musk is going to make good on his promise to pay back the original people that funded his Twitter purchase and offload that debt.

Twitter (X) was folded into xAI. Now xAI is folded into SpaceX. SpaceX will IPO (or be merged with Tesla) and those investors will be able to sell their shares - the debt is "gone", his benefactors make money, and retail investors pick up the short end of the stick.

Post reply on HN