Ugh…

The back panel is a screen… Talk about not getting the point. What a stupid design.

Honestly, hardware on Kickstarter has a bad track record. Manufacturing is hard, people always run into unexpected setbacks, every time. And you really can’t blame people for this, they always have the best of intentions, but it turns out they didn’t know the right people, or the factory they contracted with put them on the back burner, or a crucial material is suddenly unavailable, etc…

But it also means you didn’t get your hardware when you expected it.

But it’s not stripped of features, it still has the features that matter! And honestly, compact size is definitely a feature. I see phones with these giant screens and I don’t think “wow look how big they made that, luxurious” I think “lol, look how big they had to make that, total fail.”

Well, you do need to consider things in context, right?

Captain_solanum is right about how math works. The thing to consider is the safety of these delivery bots relative to the alternatives. How often do delivery drivers get into/cause accidents? It’s not never, but without the actual numbers we can’t really say if these bots are more problematic.

It’s difficult to compare these two delivery methods because they’re inherently quite different, but ultimately that is what we have to do if we want to figure out which is actually more of a danger.

But accountability is really important here. If companies want to keep using tech this way, they need to be accountable for the actions of their technology. Because these devices exist in a physical world with real consequences. You cannot be allowed to get off the hook by saying “oops, just a glitch, it won’t happen again”.

Also, you called him an idiot, but you may have also missed his point. We could just not outright insult each other.

you would see these giant fucking satellites glinting in the sky literally every single dawn and dusk.

Well, I mean only if you’re looking straight up at dawn and dusk. It won’t be like a ring just over the horizon, it would be more like a ring that touches the horizon on one side, perpendicular to the horizon, stretches across the top of the sky, and then touches the horizon on the other side.

If you’re watching the sunrise, there would still be too much light to see satellites, you’d really only be able to see them after dark, assuming you don’t live in/near a city (in which case you just can’t ever see satellites).

This guy ITs.

Man, those games got wild… I mean, they started pretty wild. But yeah.

Yeah, that’s a valid point. And yeah, that’s totally where they’re gonna put them. They’re gonna be huge, delicate targets…

I’m generally pro space, I think all the massive advances in space flight in these last couple of decades has been truly amazing. That said, I wish I had a more positive way to spin this, but yeah, that’s a serious concern. That’s bad.

I’m not sure the moon makes a lot of sense.

I mean, the two weeks of darkness is the real killer.

I mean look, let’s say our datacenter requires 100 kw of power. That means about an 800 square m solar array. If you need to store enough power to run the system through a two week night, you’ll need a lot of batteries and a much larger array. You’ll only be collecting power half the time, so the array needs to be twice as large. But there are about 30% losses in transferring energy to the battery, drain over time, and then transferring back, so some quick math says you now need somewhere around 230kw, for a 1800 square m solar array.

Currently, an array large enough to generate 100kw weighs between 1-2 tons. If we’re optimistic and say 1 ton, that’s 2.25 tons for our equivalent moon array

Now the batteries. The capacity needs to be enough to store 130kw over the course of two weeks. 130kw x 24hours x 14days = 43,680 kw hours of storage. Lithium ion batteries weigh about 5kg per kwh of storage. 43,680 kwh of storage would weigh 218 tons. And that’s just the base weight of the batteries, I didn’t factor in whatever structures or systems the batteries would need to be usable in space.

Here’s where I point out that it costs about $5 mil per ton sent to orbit. It costs somewhere between $100 mil and $1 bil to send 1 ton to the moon. Personally, I think it’s a lot easier to send 1 ton to low earth orbit, than to send 220 tons all the way to the moon. I think the only way to make data centers on the moon make sense, would be if you’re already living and working on the moon in a functioning settlement.

As crazy as orbital data centers are, if your counting in dollars, lunar data centers are literally 10,000 times crazier.

Well, you’re thinking about the right things for sure! Power, cooling, Internet connection, all super important.

But as it turns out, terrestrial solar panels are actually heavier than space solar panels, like a lot heavier. Shielding against radiation is actually less of a challenge than shielding against weather and acorns. The ISS updated it’s solar array a while back and its new ones were deployed by rolling them out, they were a thin enough film to actually roll up for launch and then roll out once attached to the ISS.

Also, these solar panels won’t have blackouts. With a sun synchronous orbit, these panels simply won’t be in shadow basically ever. The one exception would be during solar eclipses.

As for cooling, you do probably need radiators with active cooling systems. Generally you need radiator panels at a ratio of about 1/5 of the area of your solar panels, but this can vary with different designs. But that’s a linear relationship, cooling doesn’t become unfeasible at some point it just remains a design concern. The more power you generate, the more radiators you need. It’s just part of the cost of power and it scales linearly with the area of your solar array.

Yeah it’s tricky, given the pushback people are showing against datacenter construction, the issues around power, the vulnerability to attack… The space data center idea is starting to become more attractive to big tech over time, not less.

Initially, everyone agreed that the numbers just don’t add up, there’s no way it could be economical. But then these terrestrial datacenters started getting a lot of bad press, everyone was concerned about the environmental impact, about the strain on the energy grid, about water usage. All of a sudden the space plan is seeming less crazy.

and if they’re in LEO, they’ll fall back down to earth. Oh, and there’s more likelyhood that bits get flipped from all of the high energy particles up there.

You’re thinking about the right things here, these are major issues! But, they can largely avoid serious problems here. Over 500 km, there’s a lot less drag and these aren’t just going to fall out of the sky. And under 1000 km the earth’s magnetic field still mostly protects them from high energy particles. They will still definitely be more exposed to high energy particles causing random bit flips, but it’s going to be in a totally manageable range.

Giant AI datacenters will truly never be an efficient or wise use of resources, at least in my opinion, it’s just a largely stupid endeavor. But for better or worse, I expect we will be seeing some of these space based data centers in the near future. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how economically sustainable they are…

It will obviously be in a very low orbit, because that’s the easiest to reach and construct…

Well, for a bunch of reasons, these space data centers probably won’t be at very low orbits. First and foremost, very low orbits like the ones starlink uses experience a lot of atmospheric drag. With the huge solar arrays these data centers will need, that high drag environment is a killer. Going just a bit farther out would significantly reduce that drag. Also, latency isn’t a huge concern with space data centers, so very low orbits aren’t required. Lastly, since those low orbits are so highly valuable and contested, it just doesn’t make sense to put something there that doesn’t need to be there.

TLDR: Space data center orbits are likely to be somewhere between 500 - 1000 km altitudes.

And yes, that’s in untouchable range for anything but advanced militaries.

What it’s not untouchable to is legislation. That’s the practical way to fight it.

This studio sounds super awesome.

If I’m being totally honest, I’m so glad it’s patented. I hope they defend the patent aggressively so nobody else can do this. Even if Microsoft has this capability, defending the patent will limit the scope of its usage.

Bonus points if they defend it aggressively, yet barely utilize it themselves. I’m afraid that may just be wishful thinking.

Plans? Sir, you’ve misjudged me.

I mean like I said, that does suck. But we do have other options in the interim, namely Soyuz and Cygnus. If Boeing had decided to actually try to fulfill the commercial launch providers program there would also be starliner…

There are also a lot more options just around the corner, there’s the dreamchaser which looks totally badass, also JAXA is working on a vehicle and I read that the ESA is maybe working on 3 different vehicles?

Remember, by decommissioning dragon, all they’re really doing is removing the cheapest option from the market, and that’s the only reason anyone cares. The other options that have been available are still available.

Ok, that sounds about right.

And with all that in mind, I do think government funding is a significant part of their total income, but I would be very surprised if it made up for more than say 20%. I’m trying to keep in mind that less than 5% of their launches are actually for NASA. And honestly, being a telecom/ISP has been a lucrative racket from day one with the bell telephone company. (So I’m willing to bet that starlink is their cash cow)

So what I’m seeing here is an interesting situation. The main thing that seems to be an issue is that they’re ramping down the falcon 9 before people were really ready for that. That leaves all the people who were expecting that launch service to continue (Including NASA), stuck at the moment, possibly without a viable alternative. Luckily, while they may not be taking new contracts now, the article says they are still fulfilling the ones they have, so that’s good.

So yes, leaving people without a launch provider sucks for sure. But the fact that they’re shutting down falcon also demonstrates that SpaceX is expecting to be able to offer starship launches very soon. Remember, if they can’t put anything into space, they don’t really have a business at all. So this really does suggest that at least they think starship can totally replace falcon and that it’s almost ready.

The majority of all funding for SpaceX comes from the government.

Well that’s kind of the definition of “funding”. What other funding would there be? If you mean revenue or income, I think that would be possible, but that claim could use a citation.

I think this is the right take.

SpaceX may believe they’ve discovered a business model without NASA, but when the bubble pops they’ll be singing a different tune.

This is also a good reason to not nationalize spaceX as so many in this thread are calling for. I don’t want to be financially responsible for the AI mess they’re investing in now. Let them eat those losses.