Comment by t_tsonev
1 day ago
I'd really like to see the math on this one. It implies that building wind and solar on Earth is somehow worse than building it in space _and_ moving the data center there? It's not just counter-intuitive, it's bonkers.
1 day ago
I'd really like to see the math on this one. It implies that building wind and solar on Earth is somehow worse than building it in space _and_ moving the data center there? It's not just counter-intuitive, it's bonkers.
>It's not just counter-intuitive, it's bonkers.
you need to look at numbers instead of intuition - intuition naturally gets us wrong when we deal with unfamiliar things like space.
A ready 10 ton house will cost $500K-1M to place in a well developed area - the cost of land itself, communications, permits, also delays and unpredictability of process, etc. Add to that yearly taxes. Add tremendous electricity costs in case of the datacenter. And all those costs have and will be growing.
Launching 10 tons on Starship - sub-$1M and that cost will drop down to about $100K-200K.
> It implies that building wind and solar on Earth is somehow worse than building it in space _and_ moving the data center there?
exactly. Space is cheap and plentiful :)