[JumpCrisscross]

> no idea what this has to do with aerospace

SpaceX is no longer SpaceX per se, but SpaceX-xAI.

My TL; DR (and this is mine, personally) is its mission has pivoted from colonising Mars to building a Dyson sphere. Space-based datacentres are a demand excuse for putting lots of solar panels in space. Going one level down, more Cursor use is a demand excuse for putting lots of datacentres anywhere.

[riffraff]

This is like me, a couch potato, pivoting from "I'm going to run a half marathon" to "I'm going to do a marathon in under ten minutes"

[tadfisher]

If we're talking Dyson spheres, this is like going from a half-marathon to running the distance from Earth to Betelgeuse. It's just not a realistic endeavor.

[sobellian]

More like "I'm going to run every possible marathon route on the Earth's road network."

[numpad0]

And in handstanding walk because you're better at hands than legs. All their advantages are in domains to be obsoleted by technologies required for such things.

Be it the Dyson shell thing or Lunar or Mars colonies, there's no way it'll be done relying on transports from Earth surface. It could only work if we could make them from asteroid pieces. Which makes most items on their tech tree from Starship forward obsolete. And they're already all-in on those techs. It makes so little sense in so many levels.

[JumpCrisscross]

It's a mission, not a business plan. Colonising Mars was always a moonshot as well. But it aligned the company's priorities.

My point is regardless of what you think of a Dyson sphere, this theory seems to predict what the company does better than assuming everything's a ketamine fever dream.

[taneq]

Mars was a moonshot, pivot to the actual moon. ;)

[cramsession]

> this theory seems to predict what the company does better than assuming everything's a ketamine fever dream.

I think Musk being a ketamine addict explains a lot and this is very aligned. Given that he can't build a self-driving car, he would have to be under the influence of very strong drugs to think he could build a Dyson sphere of all things.

That being said, some sort of financial fraud is even more on brand.

[taneq]

Dumb question, do the cybercab thingies not drive themselves? Having a safety driver doesn’t disqualify them if for the vast majority of the time they’re autonomous. It just means they’re earlier into chasing 9’s than Waymo.

The characterisation of “level 5” autonomy as the car handling any conceivable circumstance (not that you explicitly made this claim here) is just silly. Humans can’t handle any conceivable circumstance either.

[cramsession]

No they do not drive themselves. They're not Waymos (which do drive themselves, without a driver).

[BobbyTables2]

Plot twist: Build the Dyson sphere around Earth and charge for sunlight…

[ButlerianJihad]

"Have You Ever Seen the Sun Set at 3pm?"

https://youtu.be/hjdMYyjnmks?si=iyoVV-oZAPmQtp1B

[pythonaut_16]

Arguably more accurate is that it pivoted from colonising Mars to Elon's personal piggy bank to bail out his other failing bets.

[kibwen]

> its mission has pivoted from colonising Mars to building a Dyson sphere

Obligatory mention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM

[JumpCrisscross]

She put it in the same category as AI or human-shaped robots. Those are two things Musk is working on. I stand by my theory.

[dzhiurgis]

SpaceXXX

[codingusuir]

this is Elon's desperate move to fix his weak coding problem. He recently stated he feels he is far behind in agentic coding, and that apparently that's what matters.

[JumpCrisscross]

> He recently stated he feels he is far behind in agentic coding, and that apparently that's what matters

Sure. My question was why. And my loose interrogation of the question, together with some unique domain expertise, suggests he found an excuse to work towards a Dyson sphere.