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xAI joins SpaceX

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Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#991

Post by lugao »

lugao wrote: post #608
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…

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

I did some more reading and want to walk back my skepticism a bit. There is actually serious effort going into this, such as Google’s research on space-based AI infrastructure: https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalabl...

They highlight the exact reliability constraint I was thinking of: that replacing failed TPUs is trivial on Earth but impossible in space. Their solution is redundant provisioning, which moves the problem from "operationally impossible" to "extremely expensive."

You would effectively need custom, super-redundant motherboards designed to bypass dead chips rather than replace them. The paper also tackles the interconnect problem using specialized optics to sustain high bitrates, which is fascinating but seems incredibly difficult to pull off given that the constellation topology changes constantly. It might be possible, but the resulting hardware would look nothing like a regular datacenter.

Also this would require lots of satelites to rival a regular DC which is also very hard to justify. Let's see what the promised 2027 tests will reveal.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#992

Post by dtj1123 »

danny_codes wrote: post #957
dtj1123 wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I agree that this glosses over a huge number of technical obstacles, space based solar power could scale more easily than that on earth. Lack of variable weather and gravity means rather than using photovoltaic cells, you can just set up paper thin huge mirrors to focus light and generate steam. Caveat: my understanding of this largely comes from the book The High Frontier, which is really old and probably ina…

This idea is physically possible. So is a Dyson sphere. I’m surprised Elon didn’t suggest that too.

At the current rate I guess we can expect him to propose this around 2030.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#993

Post by dtj1123 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #975
dtj1123 wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I agree that this glosses over a huge number of technical obstacles, space based solar power could scale more easily than that on earth. Lack of variable weather and gravity means rather than using photovoltaic cells, you can just set up paper thin huge mirrors to focus light and generate steam. Caveat: my understanding of this largely comes from the book The High Frontier, which is really old and probably ina…

>space based solar power could scale more easily than that on earth. Actually provide an argument instead of just asserting this. On earth, deployment of a built solar panel is screwing it into a dirt cheap frame on the ground. To deploy a solar panel in space, you must attach it to a satellite that no one involved has even pretended to claim is designed, so you need a factory for those on the same order of magnitude…

I think what's happened here is that you've interpreted my passing comment about something I find interesting to mean that I don't think this is a ploy to pocket vast sums of cash, and written a takedown for an argument that I'm not making.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#994

Post by afinlayson »

I’d love to see the new cap table of this company. My guess is this will be terrible for spacex employees and gains xai a lifeline. My guess is this helps Elon get to trillion dollar status before any changes the tax structure…

My reasoning is xai has no moat … except in lawsuits, and spacex has one of the biggest moats in history. And they aren’t valued into this equation.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#996

Post by stevenwoo »

Buttons840 wrote: post #50

SpaceX 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.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/spacex-seeks-early-index-... It also appears as though it’s a play to boost stock price by forcing SpaceX to be carried by index funds.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#997

Post by yencabulator »

mrweasel wrote: post #821
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.

Microsoft did do the experiment (Project Natick) where they had "datacenters" in pods under the sea with really good results. The idea was simply to ship enough extra capacity, but due to the environment, the failure rates where 1/8th of normal. Still, dropping a pod into the sea makes more sense than launching it into space. At least cooling, power, connectivity and eventual maintenance is simpler. The whole thing m…

Dropping a pod into the sea makes more sense than launching it into space, and Microsoft decided it wasn't worth doing.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#998

Post by indoordin0saur »

smrtinsert wrote: post #720
Buttons840 wrote: post #50

SpaceX 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 are we still supporting this person? His cars are being outclassed internationally and he's directly meddling in this countries politics. He spectacularly failed (or wasn't it blatantly misled) the CA government with regard to the tunneling, and damaged the public sector while shutting down oversight and regulatory bodies against his companies. Where is the benefit? These awesome tech demos? It just screams charl…

SpaceX launches more rockets than the rest of the world combined with a better price and far better safety record.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#999

Post by indoordin0saur »

qingcharles wrote: post #979
ecommerceguy wrote: post #25

Too me this smells of projected cash desperation. Do people actually pay for Grok?

I have clients that have X Premium+ accounts for their businesses and I use Grok that way. The biggest factor with Grok is the censorship which runs both ways. OTOH it allows for bad shit (recent X porn images), but it also allows less nannying in regular queries -- for instance I was looking for a source for a magazine from 80s which is 40 years defunct, and all the other LLMs chided me for trying to commit "copyrig…

Yeah, I started using Grok whenever I got scolded by the other AIs or I felt like they were giving me bad answers because of some internal censor or other quirks. I've found it to be very useful when answering physics problems though. It also seems to be different from the other models, which tend to cluster together in terms of responses so I go to it if I feel they aren't working out.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#1000

Post by indoordin0saur »

kachapopopow wrote: post #132

isn't this just fraud in broad daylight? I don't get it. Why not at least try to hide it?

What's the fraud? xAI is a real company if useful products, SpaceX obviously is a real company and the most successful one in its sector. They are privately owned and can be rearranged as desired.
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