[mike_hearn]

Space manufacturing is a real thing, there are already companies trialling it. The factory is small, satellite sized, and it deorbits when the manufacturing run is done. The results are protected enough for them to be picked up from Earth.

The justification (today) is that you can do very exotic things in zero-G that aren't possible on Earth. Growing ultra-pure crystals and fibre optics and similar.

[_fizz_buzz_]

Ok, that I might buy. If there is a product one can build in zero-G that one cannot build on earth. Especially something like growing crystalls. Sure. But trying to compete with something that can just as well be build on earth on the premise that it will be cheaper to do the same thing just in space is insane.

It's the same issue that I have with data centers in space. I don't think there is any big technical hurdle to send a GPU rack into space and run it there. The problem is that I have a hard time to believe it is cheaper to run a datacenter in space. When you have to compete solely on cost, it will super hard.

[mike_hearn]

I don't think it's insane. It might not work or be competitive but it's not obviously insane.

In a frictionless economy governed by spherical cows it'd be insane. But back here on Earth, AI is heavily bottlenecked by the refusal or inability of the supply chain to scale up. They think AI firms are in a bubble and will collapse, so don't want to be bag holders. A very sane concern indeed. But it does mean that inferencing (the bit that makes money) is constantly saturated even with the industry straining every sinew to build out capacity.

One bottleneck is TSMC. Not much that can be done about that. The other is the grid. Grid equipment manufacturers and CCGT makers like Siemens aren't spinning up extra manufacturing capacity, again because they fear being bag holders when Altman runs out of cash. Then you have massive interconnection backlogs, environmentalists attacking you and other practical problems.

Is it easier to get access to stable electricity supplies in space? It's not inconceivable. At the very least, in space Elon controls the full stack with nearly no regulations getting in the way after launch - it's a pure engineering problem of the sort SpaceX are good at. If he needs more power he can just build it, he doesn't have to try and convince some local government utility to scale up or give him air permits to run generators. In space, nobody can hear you(r GPUs) scream.

[jodrellblank]

> "At the very least, in space Elon controls the full stack with nearly no regulations getting in the way after launch - it's a pure engineering problem of the sort SpaceX are good at. If he needs more power he can just build it, he doesn't have to try and convince some local government utility to scale up or give him air permits to run generators. In space, nobody can hear you(r GPUs) scream."

Wouldn't he be able to float solar panels and GPUs out into international waters and run them on cargo ships powered by bunker fuel much (much much) cheaper than launching them into space?

[mike_hearn]

Cargo ship emissions are heavily regulated and the IMO is trying to net zero shipping into non-existence.

https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/imo-...

[bydlocoder]

Building nuclear-powered and solar powered datacenters in places with low population density will still be cheaper. Do you think Mongolian government won't allow China to build datacenters if the price is right?

[mike_hearn]

It might be easier in China but that doesn't help Elon or Americans.

Solar powered datacenters on Earth don't make sense to me. The GPUs are so expensive you want to run them 24/7 and power cycling them stresses the components a lot so increases failure rate. Once it boots up you need to keep the datacenter powered, you can't shut it down at night. Maybe for CPU datacenters solar power can make sense sometimes, but not for AI at the moment.

Nuclear is super hard and expensive to build. It probably really is easier to put servers in space than build nuclear.