Musk Predicts SpaceX Will Launch More AI Compute Per Year Than the Cumulative Total on Earth (substack.com)
- Reference: 0180736954
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/02/05/1949245/musk-predicts-spacex-will-launch-more-ai-compute-per-year-than-the-cumulative-total-on-earth
- Source link: https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/elon-musk-on-space-gpus-ai-optimus
Solar panels in orbit generate roughly five times the power they do on the ground because there is no day-night cycle, no cloud cover, no atmospheric loss, and no atmosphere-related energy reduction. The system economics are even more favorable because space-based operations eliminate the need for batteries entirely, making the effective cost roughly 10 times cheaper than terrestrial solar, Musk said. The terrestrial bottleneck is already real.
Musk said powering 330,000 Nvidia GB300 chips -- once you account for networking hardware, storage, peak cooling on the hottest day of the year, and reserve margin for generator servicing -- requires roughly a gigawatt at the generation level. Gas turbines are sold out through 2030, and the limiting factor is the casting of turbine vanes and blades, a process handled by just three companies worldwide.
Five years from now, Musk predicted, SpaceX will launch and operate more AI compute annually than the cumulative total on Earth, expecting at least a few hundred gigawatts per year in space. Patel estimated that 100 gigawatts alone would require on the order of 10,000 Starship launches per year, a figure Musk affirmed. SpaceX is gearing up for 10,000 launches a year, Musk said, and possibly 20,000 to 30,000.
[1] https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/elon-musk-on-space-gpus-ai-optimus
And by "most economically compelling" he means... (Score:5, Interesting)
... "the most compelling location where our new AI overlords are out of reach of government regulation, law enforcement or the angry mob with torches". I wonder when the first groups will consider to deliberately trigger the "Kessler syndrome", only to disable such "data centers in space".
Ah, the ketamine's Nazi's selling bullhit again. (Score:5, Funny)
As much AI computing as necessary to drive all those 10 million robotaxis on Mars, right?
Not all orbits (Score:3)
Not all orbits see 24h sunshine - where will he launch these things too, or will he assemble them into one large space station ?
Re:Not all orbits (Score:4)
They plan to put the satellites in a polar orbit that are slowly rotates around the Earth-axis about 1 degree/day to track the sun.
The no 1 problem is the amount of satellites in the same orbit and if there's a collision we will likely see a Kessler syndrome.
The no 2 problem is the service life of the satellites which mean tens of thousands of them will be de-orbited to burn up in the atmosphere each year when it runs out, each one weighing about 2 tonnes, but perhaps all that material burning up and spreading particles in the upper atmosphere will be an unintended solution to global warming.
Re:Not all orbits (Score:5, Insightful)
The unspoken issue here is that getting rid of heat (on Earth, all those people complaining about water use of datacentres) is far harder in space. The panels at least radiate *their* heat away from their large rear surface area, but the datacentre itself has to have large amounts of fluid cycling out and back to roughly comparably large radiators.
It doesn't make space datacentres "undoable", by any stretch, but omitting mentioning it and talking only about the power advantages is really dishonest.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, radiation efficiency compared to convection and conduction is what, two orders of magnitude smaller? None of these "x, but in space" morons ever care to remember the giant utilities hookup that is the planet Earth. In this case, it's a giant heatsink. All of the computing on planet Earth is cooled by sinking the waste heat into the atmosphere, or into a body of water.
Even funnier than the "x, but in space" morons in this case is the "X, but in space" moron that thinks he can just by willpower multiply
Re: (Score:3)
The waste heat problem has been solved for a very long time, but not if the satellites are always facing the sun and are used all the time which means you shut them down when they reach a certain temperature so they can cool down before being used again. Starlink satellites do this today except they aren't always in the sun which provides an increased efficiency in cooling. Shutting down a satellite to expediate cooling only works if you don't need 24/7 operation or if you have a constellation of satellites
Re: (Score:2)
It's not really comparable, though. Data centres are (comparatively) point sources of heat; they can't be "spread out" or laid out flat in 2d. Starlink satellites have a, flat surface with its heat spread across it. Also,Sstarlink antennas are their own radiators. They get very hot and correspondingly radiate quickly (waste heat from the thrusters is also quite high temp). Your chips by contrast are running at like 75-80C, and your cooling liquid thus has to be significantly below that to draw heat away q
Cooling (Score:2)
...will be an issue because no amount of GPU fans will be able to carry the heat away.
Re:Cooling (Score:5, Informative)
As will be radiation, orbital debris, etc., etc.
The orbit is about the most dumb location for a datacenter at this time. Maybe in 50 years, but the tech is not there. Non-engineers like Musk do not understand even the basics of the severe problems they are facing. And on the economics side it is also a total fail, because getting weight up there is still very expensive even with SpaceX.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm assuming they would need Starship working first, and that's going to drop the cost per kg to orbit by a factor of about 10. But I agree there's lots of other challenges.
Re:Cooling (Score:4, Informative)
My take is this is simply a diversion attempt from the Musk emails in the Epstein files, were he apparently professes his deep desire to get in on the rape of underage girls.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Would you mind please pointing out exactly where he says this? What part of the Epstein files shows Elon having been on the island?
Re:Cooling (Score:5, Informative)
My take is you are being dishonest, because you would have to be living under a rock to not know.
But here is one of the many, many, many references: [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/3... [cnbc.com]
And here is the document at the DOJ site: [2]https://www.justice.gov/epstei... [justice.gov]
Note that this only states he wanted to go. We do not know currently whether he went, that is probably in the files still illegally held back by the DOJ.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/30/epstein-files-show-elon-musk-planned-visit-to-island-host-at-spacex.html
[2] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00377375.pdf
Re: (Score:2)
Musk seems to be running scared. It also becomes obvious why he bought this presidency.
Re:Cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of how easy it would be for a nation like Russia, the China or the US to blackmail foreign entities that own space datacentres. They can be attacked with far greater plausible deniability, and they're not located in the rival nation's territorial jurisdiction. Massive amount of value all in one place on an eminently predictable orbit that's easy to toss a piece of quote-unquote "space debris" at.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. And that is yet another very bad problem with the whole idea.
Re:Cooling (Score:5, Funny)
Space is cold, duh. Cold+heat = room temperature. Math checks out. Can also use the GPU fans as thrusters. Excuse me, need to go to the patent office.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry. He will use the same cooling technology developed for Hyperlo... wait!
Re: (Score:2)
It's possible that he's got an answer to that problem. I'll wait to form an opinion. (Yeah, I'm skeptical too, but I don't think one should be certain based on the available evidence. Also, there are several other potential problems, but maybe he's got answers.)
Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
There are already some questions about the giant arrays of communications satellites we're throwing up there. Let's add datacenters with giant solar arrays attached to them too. I would hope the engineers that get sucked into this project at least have the decency to suggest making datacenter orbit somewhere much further out than the Starlink arrays, but knowing Musk, he'll want to keep this shit as close as possible "for serviceability" or some bullshit.
I know there's a lot of space out there, but this still seems like a really, REALLY dumb idea. Even for late stage Ketamine Musk.
Re: (Score:2)
> I know there's a lot of space out there, but this still seems like a really, REALLY dumb idea. Even for late stage Ketamine Musk.
The guy is desperately trying to distract from his place in the Epstein files. I mean, he seems to have bought a whole presidency to do so (and a cheap one at that with $250M), so these completely disconnected and insane claims are not unexpected. His fans are too dumb to understand, and the rest, he cannot reach anyways. But it buys him a bit more time where his apparently stated desire to rape some underage girls is not discussed as intensely.
10,000 Launches per year (Score:3)
Holy cow, 27 to 28 launches per day?! Well, if any company can do it my money would be on SpaceX.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the wrong problem. He's almost certainly planning to loft multiple satellites with each launch. But there are other problems it's reasonable to be dubious about.
I'm going to wait until he's launched a few to form a definite opinion...though I'll admit that I consider it unlikely.
Re: (Score:2)
Misread that as "lunches" and wondered when SpaceX started hiring hobbits from the Shire.
Classic Musk lies, any doubt who he is now? (Score:4)
"...a prediction rooted not in some exotic technical breakthrough but in the basic math of electricity supply: chip output is growing exponentially, and electrical output outside China is essentially flat."
Chip output has nothing to do with "electricity supply" and growth in "electrical output" in space is worse than "essentially flat", it's nonexistent. It's not clear what this "basic math" is, but's it's clear who's saying it.
More importantly, the enormous growth in electrical generation Musk implies will occur in space creates quite an unsolved problem, how do you cool gigawatts of computing expenditures in space? If only mankind had thought about that before! Musk will solve it though, just like he put a man on Mars by 2021.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm still trying to figure out how they resolve the latency issues of putting a data center into orbit.
When I'm talking to my AI chatbot, I don't really want to wait an extra 5 seconds for a response because my request is getting beamed into orbit before being sent back to me.
Re: Classic Musk lies, any doubt who he is now? (Score:2)
Starlink is about 300-350 mi altitude, and the satellites should be no more than about 500mi away at any given time when fully built out, IIRC. That's about 10ms one-way. These new satellites are definitely not going into geosynchronous orbit (22k mi)... if they ever were to get built.
Re: (Score:2)
> "...a prediction rooted not in some exotic technical breakthrough but in the basic math of electricity supply: chip output is growing exponentially, and electrical output outside China is essentially flat."
> Chip output has nothing to do with "electricity supply" and growth in "electrical output" in space is worse than "essentially flat", it's nonexistent. It's not clear what this "basic math" is, but's it's clear who's saying it.
From all of the above it seems like the "basic" and "clear" solution is to build more power stations. It would be much, much cheaper to slap the SpaceX branding on some new nuclear power stations. Or to just buy Westinghouse and vertically integrate.
Re: (Score:2)
Incidentally, Moore's law has stopped working to predict computational power, because it is basically all in the interconnect these days. Hence no "exponential growth" at this time, and probably never again.
Or is he talking about chip power _input_ maybe? It is hard to tell with the confused statements this druggie is making.
Musk predicts his dick is the biggest! (Score:2)
Pretty much the same level. This is a not very capable or smart asshole that just got very lucky with inherited money.
price war of the satellites (Score:2)
"Five years from now, Musk predicted, SpaceX will launch and operate more AI compute annually than the cumulative total on Earth, expecting at least a few hundred gigawatts per year in space..."
That's a prediction, all right. Elon Musk makes lots of well-documented predictions. How many of them have been accurate? If and when this prediction turns out to be wrong, what will happen? Has Musk staked anything of value on this prediction? Will he suffer any consequences whatever for being wrong?
Okay. So,
Re:price war of the satellites (Score:5, Insightful)
Some have been wrong. Some have been delayed but eventually delivered. Some have been right. What most people seem to miss is that by setting insanely optimistic goals, it creates the possibility. Teams across his companies seem to be motivated to deliver more often than not, even if the optimistic deadlines slip. So why not set a push goal now and re-calibrate when physics or some other issue rises as they dig further into the problem?
Re:price war of the satellites (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you done an analysis of all his public statements on business ideas and compared them with reality? Me belief is it’s far worse than you are giving him credit for. How’s the car company doing? And self driving (that is: full self-driving where I can take a nap in the backseat). It seems like he’s bored with it, so, he’s given up. Now it’s robots. Billions of im not mistaken.
You should try not to buy into the whole “business bravado.” It’s tiring when it’s detached from reality. He think he’s being visionary. He’s not. His stuff is so unhinged, what I would call him is a futurist. Futurists are a dime a dozen. People have been writing books and spouting all sorts of wacky ideas like this for a century. Anyone can say “I’m going to make 1 billion robots, and they will do everything you’d ever want!”
You do realize that talk is cheap.
One tell that he’s got some issues: he’s always telling people that he’s sleeping on the office floor because he’s working so hard. Seems like he’s trying to impress just a bit too much.
But sure, at the end of the day, he’s on his way to being a trillionaire, and I am not.
Re: (Score:3)
> What most people seem to miss is that by setting insanely optimistic goals, it creates the possibility. Teams across his companies seem to be motivated to deliver more often than not, even if the optimistic deadlines slip. So why not set a push goal now and re-calibrate when physics or some other issue rises as they dig further into the problem?
If you want to set crazy goals for your organization internally as some kind of management gambit to push the envelope go for it. Nobody cares and nobody is going to shit on you for it.
When you are the head of a publicly traded company and you make public statements about your organization completely unmoored from reality that is a different matter entirely.
Re: (Score:2)
"So why not set a push goal now and re-calibrate when physics or some other issue rises?"
If you're asking 'why is lying wrong?', I guess I don't have a good answer to that.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you're asking 'why is lying wrong?', I guess I don't have a good answer to that.
I have one: Because it destroys society above a certain level. All societies are based on trust. When that trust becomes unsustainable, societies implode.
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> What most people seem to miss is that by setting insanely optimistic goals, it creates the possibility.
No, it does not. Insane predictions are just one thing: insane.
Right (Score:2)
Just like how he announced a $40k cybertruck back in 2019.
100 Gigawatts. In a vacuum. (Score:5, Informative)
Neat trick. Now what are you going to get rid of all that heat that generates?
You know. IN A VACUUM.
Yes, I know there are IR radiators. With a dissipation of around 200w per square meter
Now do the math for 100GW
Re: (Score:2)
Forget about just the heat, that's about 110 square mile of solar panels required to generate 100GW (accounting to the, ahem, "5 times greater efficiency" of being in space). Which, if were a single array of that size, cast a shadow of about 50 square miles of total darkness. Granted, he's not suggesting a SINGLE datacenter, rather many smaller ones, but the total SF of panels required is about equal, and not a small array by any account.
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Well if you pitch it as a fix for global warming as well as a way to cause crop failure of your enemies....
Re: (Score:2)
Duggan: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Romana: If YOU wanted an omelette, I'd expect to find a pile of broken crockery, a cooker in flames and an unconscious chef.
I dunno, I.... just connect this scene to Musk's diabolical plans.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you plumb coolant to 110 square miles of solar panels? And pump it fast enough and into big enough radiators to cool both the panels and the chips? If these are in sun-synchronous orbit they won't have any time to cool like the little starlinks do. Micrometeorites are not going to help with reliability much. The engineering problems are many, but if solved it will probably happen sooner rather than later. I'd rather see this ridiculously expensive AI project burn capital to improve orbital engineeri
Re: 100 Gigawatts. In a vacuum. (Score:3)
I'm still waiting to hear what AI chips are radiation hardened for operation in space.
Re: (Score:2)
> Yes, I know there are IR radiators. With a dissipation of around 200w per square meter
Interesting, because that's almost exactly the amount of solar panel area to generate that much power. If only the IR radiators could be on side of the solar panel not facing the sun...
Re: (Score:2)
Funny thing is that Musk is actually supposed to have a Physics Bachelor. Well, there are rumors he just bought it to get a fake legal immigrant status. Since he seems to not understand basic Physics, that looks more and more likely. While a Physics bachelor does not give you much, it should at least give you an understanding of really basic things like heat radiation.
What about heat? (Score:2)
Let's say that Elon is right and the economics of space-based solar energy make the expense of launching into orbit worthwhile. Let's also say that we manage to avoid the Kessler Syndrome that Elon's companies have largely helped to make more dire.
Compute generates heat. Lots and lots of heat. And heat is difficult to dump in space. How does he plan to get around that not insignificant engineering problem?
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's not going to happen in three years.
Not just heat -- what about cosmic rays, etc? (Score:3)
There are ways to dispose of heat in space. Cold fingers that are attached thermally to radiative panels, for example. But they do add to the mass and cost of the spacecraft.
One thing I haven't seen yet in the discussion (not in TFA either) is the inhostility of the space environment towards computational hardware. Satellites that need to spend any kind of time in space need to use computer chips that can withstand cosmic rays. This involves building shielding (thus adding mass and cost again) or running ch
Re: (Score:2)
Whoops, inhospitability, not inhostility.
Re:5X power is BS (Score:2)
At AM0 (Space) you get about 1347W per square meter. At AM1.5 (on Earth) you get roughly 1000W per square meter and is what most terrestrial solar is measured at.
Re: (Score:2)
And this is just what power is available. Solar cells are not 100% efficient.
Prediction is predictable. (Score:4, Insightful)
I see Musk is already hyping for the IPO. Whatever happened to all his self driving car predictions? Never mind, [1]I found it [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk
Any publicity is good publicity (Score:2)
He keeps lobbing these bullshit "predictions" out there. People keep on clicking on the links. People keep on talking about him. This keeps him relevant. It's the same with the Kardashians and every other pop culture "personality".
It's real simple here people... just report facts if what is currently happening and what has happened. Then this goblin will go back into the shadows where he belongs.
Salesman (Score:3)
The premise here is that companies are going to eat the extra costs for launching a bunch of heavy, heat generating, bandwidth hungry, unrepairable objects into space. Rather than build a power plant somewhere on the planet. And this isn't just NIMBY US or Europe, when talking outer space anywhere on earth is the competitor.
Call me skeptical that the economics work, but not surprised that the primary salesman of a AI and space company is selling the possible benefits of a vertically integrated product.
so, about that... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) 10,000 launches per year is 27-28 launches per day, every day. Just the logistics of producing the requisite fuel for that pace is absurd.
2) no day-night cycle in space? What sort of orbit are these notional data centers going into where they never pass through the Earth's shadow? I know there are some, but can SpaceX loft a data center into one, and would it be viable for what they want to do?
3) how exactly does he expect to handle multiple gigawatts of heat generation in space?
4) most importantly, musk is a nazi fuckwit, serial liar, and wannabe pedo. His word is less than worthless.
Re: (Score:2)
Wobbly polar orbit in the lower Van Allen belt. That puts the solar panels right in the middle of the day/night line, with the panels facing the sun all the time. There's a lot of shit in LOE going around the poles, so the further out the better, except for all the radiation from the Van Allen belts. It will be hard to maintain, so they'll probably be built with short service lifespans and de-orbited frequently. Hey if you got the capital, might as well burn it building a cathedral nobody wants!
Re: (Score:2)
1) Hopefully they mean "objects launched" rather than rockets lifting off.
2) Either [1]sun-synchonous [wikipedia.org] or inclined GEO? Sun-sync is already used for Earth-observation spacecraft and other stuff of higher value.
3) Really efficient, articulating radiators?
4) Yo.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit
Humanity pay bitterly for his electricty usage (Score:2)
If successful, many people will be put out of work, and those who have homes will pay more for their electricity.
Re: (Score:2)
> If successful, many people will be put out of work, and those who have homes will pay more for their electricity.
Most people's homes aren't in space though, so I think we're good on this.
He's going to dump Tesla into your 401k (Score:3)
He already used x AI to withdraw tens of billions of dollars from Tesla and shifted to SpaceX. The SEC just look the other way. He also withdrew 95 billion dollars worth of value out of Tesla.
He's no Bernie Madoff he's smart enough to make sure that big investors who could throw him in prison are going to get taken care of. I think if you're reading this you know you're not one of those big investors.
20 years ago he would be working on dumping the now virtually worthless Tesla onto public pensions after soaking Wall Street investors. But we've been doing that for decades so they're just aren't enough public pensions left to dump something the size of Tesla onto when it finally collapses.
And collapse it will. The 95 billion dollar pay package he extracted means there won't be any money to do the research and development he needs to keep up with competitors. His cars were already getting long in the tooth. He's also a massive political liability for anyone outside the United States. Having hitched his wagon to Trump and Trump threatening to invade Europe. So he's going to get locked out of Europe before long and he's already more or less been kicked out of China because they don't bother with or tolerate a large manufacturing presence of something that could be doing themselves. That just leaves him with the United States and we are at best waning and worse without the subsidies Tesla lost almost a quarter of their sales.
Again he's going to dump it all onto your 401k and you're going to have to go back to work in your 70s.
Re: (Score:2)
But what does any of your screed have to do about launching AI into space?
Come to think of it, I'd actually kind of support Musk if his idea for launching AI into space was instead a method of disposal for the slop-producing monster we've created.
Call me when he launches the first one (Score:2)
Until then, it's pure theoretical speculative jabber.
From the same guy (Score:2)
... that promised us Mars by 2022?
Re: (Score:2)
He probably bought shares in the company that makes the bars and considered that good enough.
Kessler Syndrome (Score:3)
There was some recent research showing that we are actually much closer to [1]Kessler Syndrome [wikipedia.org] than was originally thought. Basically, if we were to lose control of the existing constellations (and therefore the ability to dodge debris) then the next significant collision would happen in a matter of days, and then the cascading collisions would produce more and more debris. Some of the orbits would stay unusable for years. I don't think you want to launch satellites with these large solar panel arrays into the midst of that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Re: (Score:2)
I've long said that he future lies in space garbage collection and disposal. The challenge will be more than technical. In fact the technical challenges may be pretty simple. The real difficulty will be getting people to pay you for it. You'll need governments to pay you to do it, or convince companies like StarLink to pay you to clean up their orbital mess, rather than just leave it hurtling around the Earth.
The other thing is permanent waste disposal. Think really nasty things like nuclear waste. Launch i
Empty promises (Score:2)
Gotta lie to keep the stock price up.
Where’s his switch? (Score:2)
Can someone shut him down for a while? I can’t remember where his switch is.
Re: (Score:2)
He's a Martian robot spy send to sabotage the Earth prior to the invasion.
Fuzzy Math (Score:2)
I would think the cost to lift all of this into orbit makes the price/value equation go out the window. But if you ignore all of that and the fixed costs, sure, maybe it's economical. But those costs are kind of a big deal (Not to mention if you have a technical issue, like needing to replace a bad stick of ram)
if one bowl of ice cream is good (Score:2)
30,000 bowls a DAY is ... 30,000 times better.
Obviously.
So this is farcical
Coining The Term (Score:2)
This is my stake!
I am coining the terms: Datacenter Nebula, Compute Nebula, and AI Nebula to describe data centers and AI, not in the cloud, but in space.
Compute Constellation seems like a better fit, but there also seems like a lot of opportunity for people to claim prior art, trademark, or copyright. But, I'm the first to name the spaced out Compute Nebula.
Pay me, Bitches!
I welcome our new space AI overlords from the AI Nebula.
IPO must be real soon - really pushing the hype (Score:2)
Basically just working to butter up the suckers...I mean investors....to make sure they will pay too much for the stock when the IPO drops.
He's proposing 10000 launches a year - that's 27-28 a day. No way that is realistic - and we all know it. He's trying to back up his one million satellite constellation - which someone reminded him means launching 200,000 satellites a year at least assuming a five year hardware obsolescence - because we're talking compute power here - it goes obsolete in that time or l
The Cost of a 1 GW data center in orbit (Score:2)
Suppose that Elon wanted to put 1 GW of solar in orbit and used that GW to power GPUs. What would the cost be? Let's assume that SpaceX can get starship to land both stages and SpaceX can put 100 tones in orbit for $20 million in one launch.
All figures below are WAG - wild ass guesses.
The cost of all the engineering research needed put a GW data center in orbit = ???? = $30B ???"
10,000 tons of Solar Cells - cost $500 million - needs 100 launches = $2B
20,000 tons of Radiators - cost $20B - needs
1 TW?? (Score:3)
To generate 1kW of electricity from the Sun, you need about 10m^2 of solar panels. So to generate 1TW, you need 10x10^9 m^2 of solar panels, or about 10,000 square kilometres. Even if space is a better environment, let's say that's 5000 square kilometres.
Solar panels cost around $100 per square metre. So... anyone willing to invest $500B just for the solar panels alone, never mind getting them up into space and building the data centres and getting the servers up there? I guess someone might be willing to hand Elon a couple of trillion bucks... who knows.
More space junk (Score:2)
wish this overcapitalized moron cleaned up after himself instead of pretending that space junk doesnt matter. Getting pretty cluttered up there and some suggest it is already at a critical level.
Yeah this is a good idea (Score:2)
Yeah what a great idea. Then Russia can not only take our his Starlink satellites but also his space based AI data centers.
[1]https://www.pbs.org/newshour/w... [pbs.org]
[2]https://www.express.co.uk/news... [express.co.uk]
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/intelligence-agencies-suspect-russia-is-developing-anti-satellite-weapon-to-target-starlink-service
[2] https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2165492/russia-to-nuke-musk-starlink
Re: (Score:2)
threatening and doing are two separate things. The Russians tend to over claim there capabilities. [1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Russ... [duckduckgo.com]
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Russiam+military+lies&ia=web
i predict (Score:2)
that he's the first to be tried at the Nuremburg redux
Space-hardened GPUs? (Score:2)
Space-hardened GPUs are rare, costly, and generations behind datacenter-class hardware, as are CPUs. And as others have pointed out: The heat dissipation. The electrical energy. The connectivity. The launch costs. The maintenance. Nothing about this makes any sense. He might as well move car manufacturing to space.
Re: (Score:2)
> This will be coming right after Full Self Driving.
People like to rag on Tesla's self driving, but to that I say: early versions of Windows used to crash all the time, too.
Liar (Score:5, Insightful)
More lies from a pathological liar. I'm amazed anyone listens to a word he says anymore, except to know when to buy or sell certain stocks.
Re:Liar (Score:4)
Exactly - how much electricity could you generate through the equivalent of launching 30,000 space rockets a year? And then managing those satellites, de-orbiting them when (some or many) of them fail, tracking space debris, launch failures, producing enough rocket fuel...building a few nuclear plants or mega solar panel installations would be much more practical and cost effective.
Re: Liar (Score:2)
It really wouldnâ(TM)t. Suppose your sats have 5m square in area - I choose this number because thatâ(TM)s what will fit in a stack in a starship. Now give them fold out solar panels, 4 on each side. Thatâ(TM)s 200 m^2 of panels. Solar panels in space generate about 1kW per square metre, so thatâ(TM)s 200kW of power per satellite. A normal nuclear plant will generate somewhere between 500MW and a GW. So to generate the same power you need 2500-5000 satellites. You can launch around
Re: (Score:2)
Meantime, a solar farm in the southern US that can deliver 1GW would cost about $1bn, and the battery bank another $1bn
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Also, you ignored the cost and additional launches for sending the complete AI compute up into space, including the very massy chips, the radiators for cooling, and the structural trusses for linking it to the solar arrays. Because all of that power is going to become heat which must be radiated away. Plus there’s the chip hardening costs and indeed system hardening (micrometeroids). At least 100 further Starship launches, I reckon.
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And, even once you get everything up there, including the massive solar arrays, some to-be-designed cooling system, the chips, and all of the various infrastructure to hold it together, you still have to be able to get a strong and very fast communications signal back and forth to Earth with all that sweet, sweet, AI juice. That costs money and takes electricity, too, not to mention it all shuts down during the latest solar storm. And, as another poster pointed out, repairs are impossible. If something frie
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And how is he going to cool those data centers in space? Isn't that a major challenge that they haven't really solved? And how do they maintain the hardware? In a datacenter if a node goes down you can have someone fix it or replace it if needed. It's a solution in search of a problem.
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Space is quite good at cooling things.
You've got a shit ton of space, and the best Carnot efficiency you can ask for.
Cooling a bunch of electronics in space is different than trying to cool some humans in spacesuits in space.
As for maintenance, that is indeed a tricky one. However- keep in mind the SpaceX model is simply- keep sending new ones up. You don't maintain shit. You maintain the population of running nodes by replacing them as they die.
All you really need is a way to de-orbit a node that can
Re: Liar (Score:5, Funny)
> You don't become a successful business owner this many times over by lying to people.
Greetings! The good news is that your time machine has successfully transported you to the year 2026. The bad news is that it's 2026.
Re: Liar [liar pants on fire] (Score:3)
Mod parent funny, but not really. So now I'm trying to make a joke about fueling a rocket ship with burning pants. Or should that be a joke about powering his AI data center with burning pants?
But right now I'm most disappointed that I'm not a Chinese Francophile. Therefore I'm not allowed to make any jokes (with a mixed French and Chinese accent) about Dr Fu Pa... Not even Monsieur Fu Pa? But I have been accused of seeming to be French when I talk in Japanese? So if you confuse Japan with China and then...
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I predict his prediction will come true right around the same time he arrives on Mars. I'm really looking forward to one of those.
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Maaaaan, I got 10 kids to feed!
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Hmmmm. Microsoft did just fine with lying (even in court), and Enron would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky kids and their mangy brownouts.
Psychologists argue that a primary trait of a good CEO is psychopathy, since it requires a personality that has no remorse or compassion and a willingness to do whatever it takes.
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> You don't become a successful business owner this many times over by lying to people.
Thanks! I'll be sure to revise my pitch to "My idea probably won't work and ya'll are statistically likely to lose all your money. Still want to invest?" Obscene amount of riches, here I come.
Re:Liar (Score:5, Informative)
He does lie constantly, and calling it "over optimistic" is simplifying it too far, and giving too much benefit of the doubt.
There is no way FSD will ever be a thing with just cameras. Having your tesla work as a taxi overnight? Not optimism, pure bullshit.
Same with that stupid robot, it's going to basically be tesla fan boy barebones real dolls, its too little too late.
Mars can't be colonised no matter what he says.
Twitter is not a haven for free speech, as evidenced by anyone who is not right wing or criticises musk directly. Hell, even the cybertrukk capabilities were mainly lies, and is a glorified sedan with glued on metal panels.
So yeah, he's a liar.
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I don't know.
I mean, I can see where you're coming from, but at the same time- I don't find it hard to swallow that he actually does believe his own dumb shit, like FSD will happen with only cameras.
This is the motherfucker that argued with scientists about nuking mars, like they were the morons.
Musk's fans have mistaken autism for intelligence. He's simply not that fucking intelligent.
He is a dreamer- I will give him that. But the guy isn't any more a business genius than Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos wer
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Yikes, I seem to have touched a nerve.
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> Listen, I think he has gotten a bit odd too over the years. However, he's not lying, he's just been way too overoptimistic when it comes to time tables. You don't become a successful business owner this many times over by lying to people.
Legit the best laugh I've had all fucking day. God damn. Somebody mod this guy funny. Holy shit.