[vessenes]

Elon makes a relatively good case in the Dwarkesh podcast. I recall it like this:

1) Energy infra is going to be seriously limited on the production side well, well below demand

2) energy engineering solar for space requires less materials than for gravity-based solar (!)

3) you cut out distribution network needs when you just launch stuff all per-pod in space

4) SpaceX thinks it can create a scalable vertically integrated production facility to turn raw materials into space datacenter pods, with the exception of chips.

As a business bet, this is predicated on 10,000x inference demand growth - if we have that, and SpaceX can get the integrated production rolling, and get Starship launching, then these will be actively utilized at scale.

Whether you are bullish on the whole plan should, I think come down to your take on those priors: 10kx growth, ability to manage supply chain and production, Starship outlook, and silicon access.

I'm not bearish on this after listening to the podcast; it has a very Elon-like returns distribution - if they're wrong on a lot of this, they'll probably have some moderately price-competitive datacenter facilities in space and a lot of built organizational knowhow while Brooklyn journalists dunk on them for spending all that effort to just replicate what we have on Earth. If they're right about most of this, they'll have an unreplicable head start, both due to years of experience, and due to the cheap launch they gambled on ten years ago, they'll have a nearly insurmountable moat.

[kybernetikos]

Everything relating to a datacentre that you can do in space you can do more easily on earth, regardless of 10,000x inference growth or supply chain or production or starship or silicon. I just don't think you can be cost competitive with earth bound data centres if 'protected from the poors' isn't a selling point.

By the way, 10,000x inference growth would look like what happened with cryptocurrency mining - after a couple of years, you'd be needing to upgrade all your machines with ASICs and the market would be flooded with very cheap graphics cards. I doubt that upgrading space data centres would be fun.

[vessenes]

Zoning is one area that’s better in space. And power density for solar is another.

I don’t get your mining analogy though - a non upgradable data center pod is either going to pay off its capital costs or it won’t. Once it has, any revenue is close to 100% profit. 10k demand increase is the opposite of mining dynamics: there you get a 10k supply increase that the price has to support, in combination with more efficient silicon. Here the demand drives revenue and earnings.

If there’s some crazy inflection point in chips then you’ll still have all the power infra in space - you can just like cut the old pod and hook up a new one: or more likely manufacturing economies of scale mean you probably just keep sending up new systems and put the old ones on work loads they can manage at market prices.

[CamperBob2]

Zoning is one area that’s better in space.

Not really, though? The idea that Earth-based data centers need to be built in populated, developed areas is indeed dumb, yet it seems to be inexplicably baked into everyone's assumptions. In particular, the small discrete data centers that Musk wants to launch could go anywhere on Earth.

They could be powered by local PV arrays and batteries, they can be cooled by smaller radiators than they would need to use in space, and they could be networked via Starlink or something very much like it, just as they would need to be networked in space. There's nothing special about space, it just costs more to get there.

If he wants them to be out of reach of governments, why not put them on container ships in international waters? There are thousands at sea at any given time, and I'm sure their operators would be happy to rent them out.

Hell, put them on dirigibles that just drift around in international airspace for months at a time. Anywhere but space.

And power density for solar is another.

Does power density matter in terrestrial solar applications? If so, why? These things can and should be deployed in oceans, deserts, and trackless wastelands. Who cares how big the solar panels are?

[rincebrain]

The problem is that you need humans to run datacenters, and so that puts ceilings on how far away from humans you can put them without the humans no longer being willing to commute there.

And the cost of building all the infra to support humans living in an area that humans are not already populating is enormous.

[CamperBob2]

Well, evidently you don't need humans to run datacenters, if we're talking about launching them into LEO!

Here's an idea, let's do this instead: we put them in the desert, or on boats or zeppelins or whatever, and we pretend they're in space. If anybody asks, those fuckers are in space, man. Computin' in the cosmos.

[kybernetikos]

> you need humans to run datacenters.

As far as I can tell from random articles online, it seems that as a rule of thumb, you need about 6 humans +1.5 humans per megawatt - and that's just for running the datacenter part, different people maintain the power generation infrastructure. Now, if you have to house those people in space or fly them up whenever they have to do anything, that's going to destroy your budget.

If you want to assume a level of automation that makes that unnecessary, that's fine, but then you need to also assume that same level of automation in earth based data centers too, and everything that goes with that.

[vessenes]

All questions/comments that I don't know enough to opine on.

But, power density in terrestrial I think we can do some math and reasoning:

First, oceans are WAYYY more hostile than space. Oxidation + salt water + .. I don't think it's even close there. I don't think they are comparable.

Deserts and trackless wastelands - I have some experience with sub-Saharan logistics; a couple of points -- I would not be surprised if actual deployment to trackless wastelands is more expensive than lift. Analysts estimate $55k-85k per ton under starship. (Elon estimates much lower; let's stick with low end of analyst numbers).

Trackless wastelands are really hard to get to. For instance, I've seen a fuel truck tipped over on its side in a river next to a small tow truck tipped on its side in a river next to a larger crane trying to rescue the original truck and the "rescue" truck in Southern Kenya -- by no means a trackless waste -- probably a week long ordeal, JUST for diesel delivery. This was in an area under former British rule with roads and stuff.

Second, trackless wastelands are really hard to find. There are people everywhere, man. And they like free metal, free power, etc.

If we imagine instead just deploying to West Texas, I think the square footage does add up. 40 foot container -> call it 16 racks. Nvidia estimates 600kw per rack in 2027 with Vera Rubin(!!JFC!!). So, 10MW of power per container. Let's imagine we magically found water in West Texas and have a PUE of 1.2, so 12MW. Solar panels are like 20 W/sq ft.

I got lazy; Claude tells me with 2.5x land needed for spacing, infra, etc, 6.5 peak sun hours, a couple of acres for storage, roughly 130 acres (0.2 sq miles) + 53 Tesla megapacks for storage per container.

I'll revise my above thoughts - there is NO WAY it's cheaper to do that in trackless wastes than space. I don't know about west Texas, but I don't think it's crazy to think that you might want to spend five years on engineering and production scaling instead of town and county and state and federal permitting.

[CamperBob2]

Granted, some compelling points against the "trackless wasteland" plan. All of them sound pretty valid to me.

Oceans, though -- we know how to deal with saltwater environments, we've done that for a while now. A key point is that anything you send into space or install near saltwater isn't going to last long without either regular maintenance or high up-front expense. But in this case, the equipment only has to last a few years until it's obsolete anyway, and ~5% FIT is probably tolerable. So I maintain that it's doable.

One good thing about an ocean-based platform is that it makes the heat dissipation problem go away virtually for free.

None of the challenges of running a 10 MW container full of hardware go away in space (other than the threat of nomadic scavengers, I suppose.) Yes, space-based PV arrays are smaller and lighter... but that's it, big deal. In particular, the idea of getting rid of that much heat in space without the benefit of convection, conduction, acres of expensive radiators, or magic is beyond my ability to comprehend, much less address. Everything having to do with heat removal is much harder in space.

So, given that you aren't going put 10 MW worth of hardware in a single satellite anyway, it doesn't seem valid to compare such installations on an equal basis as you're doing here. The 130-acre site you mention doesn't replace one satellite, it would probably replace a thousand of them.

You get a lot of expensive redundant requirements when you split up the problem that way, as well. These requirements will eat up any savings you might get from space-based deployment. Instead of one communications link with expensive RF hardware, you now need a thousand. Likewise, it's cheaper to build one 10 MW power substation than a thousand independent 10 kW power management solutions. And remember, this is all to support a single shipping container worth of hardware.

[ActorNightly]

>Elon makes a relatively good case in the Dwarkesh podcast.

Are we still going to pretend that the man who has gotten every single prediction wrong so far knows what he is talking about?

[bobsmooth]

Are we still going to pretend that the man who has revolutionized at least 2 different industries doesn't know what he's talking about?

[ActorNightly]

He didn't revolutionize shit. He just threw enough VC money and paid the right people enough to eventually make a product that sticks. It took Space X multitude of crashes, downright scamming their suppliers, and lots of turnover to do something that other companies did in a few years. And the Starship is just laughably stupid.

And Tesla's only success is because they were subsidized like crazy. Of course people are going to purchase cheap electric cars with no maintenance. If BYD was allowed to operate in US, Tesla would have been under ground long time ago.

But I get your sentiment though. You are so far down the conservatism rabbit hole and probably have some inappropriate thoughts towards children, so you have to defend Musk till you die because god forbid you admit to yourself that you are terrible human being.

[yndoendo]

He has never made a good case only coherent stories people believe.

He has been saying self driving cars are right around the corner 10+ years by using a staged video.

I will never forget this statement; _I don't know anything about EVs so when he talked I believed him. I don't know anything about rockets so when he talked I believed him. I most defiantly know about software development and when he opens his mouth I know he is lying."

Still don't get what people see in him. Deep down he is not a good person and will say anything to pump up his image and stock.

P.S. Number of his fans like to down vote people for calling him a bad person.

[tartoran]

How is cooling though?

[vessenes]

Yeah I wonder the same thing - I keep getting told heat management in space is hard, but nobody discusses this inre the data centers. My understanding is one cooling mechanism is to just shoot lasers out into space (is this sci fi?) - I guess in that case you could just send energy back to your solar rigs, depending on wavelengths. TLDR: no idea

[tartoran]

The whole thing is pie in the sky same as landing people on Mars. It's cool but if you look into deeper it doesn't make much sense and it's extremely challenging and on top of it all expensive as hell.

[kybernetikos]

I understand that in earth based data centers, 30-40% of the power is spent on cooling. That's in facilities that can cool using conduction and convection to the outside environment.

I don't have any experience in this area, but it seems like for every square meter of solar panel you need about half that in radiator area. And depending on your orbit, these are probably not static things just sitting there, they need to be orientated correctly to work and their correct orientations will change over time.

The worry for me is the level of human maintenance required. The ISS has probably the biggest solar array around, and they send humans out to perform maintainance and repair on it multiple times a year. A decent size data center would need an order of magnitude more solar and radiators than the ISS, and so presumably would need even more maintenance.

[imiric]

You forgot 5: SpaceX has a monopoly on deploying satellites to LEO, with practically unlimited room for growth, and far less red tape and obstacles than anywhere on Earth. Whatever R&D and operational costs this insane engineering feat might have are offset by their market advantage, and Musk's Elizabeth Holmes-ian capability to fund his projects, in addition to relying on his own personal wealth and all of his other companies combined.

The fact that this lunatic is polluting humanity's view into the universe mainly for enriching himself and his shareholders, and that everyone is playing along with this, is sickening.

[skywhopper]

Every one of those points is false or an outright lie, though.