Comment by gok

I think the Colossus[1] predated the ENIAC but is still in line with your general theme of doing stuff for the military. In this case it was used for cipher breaking, not firing calculations.

You could argue that it doesn't really count though because it was only turing complete in theory: "A Colossus computer was thus not a fully Turing complete machine. However, University of San Francisco professor Benjamin Wells has shown that if all ten Colossus machines made were rearranged in a specific cluster, then the entire set of computers could have simulated a universal Turing machine, and thus be Turing complete."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

Yes, but as Ron Perlman famously said in the beginning of Fallout, "War never changes".

I would be more shocked that we eliminated war than if we achieved this version of Elon's future.

It makes sense to think that we will continue to make scientific progress through war and self defense.

Reason being, nothing is more motivating than wanting to survive

The digital internet began with the telegraphy network in the early 1800s.

Many, many network protocols were developed and used.

This is a question that analysts don't even ask on earnings calls for companies with lowly earthbound datacenters full of the same GPUs.

The stock moves based on the same promise that's already unchecked without this new "in space" suffix:

We'll build datacenters using money we don't have yet, fill them with GPUs we haven't secured or even sourced, power them with infrastructure that can't be built in the promised time, and profit on their inference time over an ever-increasing (on paper) lifespan.

Same that happens with Starlink satellites that are obsolete or exhausted their fuel - they burn up in the atmosphere.

> the useful lifespan of the gpus in 4-6 years. Sooo what happens when you need to upgrade or repair?

Average life of starlink satellite is around 4-5 years

A "fully and rapidly reusable" Starship would bring the cost of launch down orders of magnitude, perhaps to a level where it makes sense to send up satellites to repair/refuel other satellites.

With zero energy cost it will run until it stops working or runs out of fuel, which I'm guessing is between 5-7 years.

> Sooo what happens when you need to upgrade or repair?

The satellite deorbits and you launch the next one.

not to mention that radiation hardening of chips has a big impact on cost and performance

Reliably and efficiently transport energy generated in space back to earth, for starters

Or let me guess, its going to be profitable to mine crypto in space (thereby solving the problem of transporting the "work" back to earth)

If we (as in "civilization") were able to produce that many solar panels, we should cover all the deserts with them. It will also shift the local climate balance towards a more habitable ecosystem, enabling first vegetation and then slowly growing the rest of the food chain.

Will it, though?

[dead]

You don't need any major technological advances to build a proof-of-concept

You do - cooling those datacenters in space is an unsolved problem.

Bezos has been pushing manufacturing-in-space for a long time, as a ideal candidate for what to do in space that you might prefer to not do on Earth. Robotics, AI automation, manufacturing - combo it in space, let the robots manufacture for us in space. Abundant energy, low concerns about most forms of pollution. We'll need to dramatically improve our ability to transit mass to and from cheaply first of course (we're obviously talking many decades into the future).

That's not a new problem that no one has dealt with before. The ISS for instance has its External Active Thermal Control System (EACTS).

It's not so much a matter of whether it's an unsolvable problem but more like, how expensive is it to solve this problem, what are its limitations, and does the project still makes economic sense once you factor all that in?

It makes sense to target a higher operating temperature, like 375K. At some point, the energy budget would reach an equilibrium. The Earth constantly absorbs solar energy and also dissipates the heat only by radiative cooling. But the equilibrium temperature of the Earth is still kind of cool.

I guess the trick lies in the operating temperature and the geometry of the satellites.

I agree that data centers in space is nuts.

But I think there's solutions to the waste heat issue

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/engineer...

Just have to size radiators correctly. Not a physics problem. Just an economic one.

Main physics problem is actually that the math works better at higher GPU temps for efficiency reasons and that might have reliability trade off.

I once had a job mopping floors and was quite successful at it, even if I say so myself. Based on my experience, do you think it is reasonable for me to claim that I will eventually develop techniques for cleaning the oceans of all plastic waste? Folks are criticizing the pie in the sky claims, not that they can do anything at all.

spacex is one thing but xai accomplished what? the most racist csam prone llm?

There's no reason to think the brilliant minds at SpaceX are supportive of focusing their mission in any manner-what-so-ever on datacenters in space. You can't call on their genius as the supportive argument accordingly.

This vision doesn't come from those great engineers, but from Elon, the guy who promised Hyperloop, FSD in 2 years 10 years ago, and lots of other BS

This place has derangement syndrome unfortunately. Such pessimists, it’s a bit sad

Haha, hard pass on the job. I prefer my oxygen at 1 atm.

I'm not a data center technician myself, but I have deep respect for those folks and the complexity they manage. It's quite surprising the market still buys Musk's claims day after day.

Great comment on hardware and maintenance costs, and in comparison Elon wrote "My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space." It's a pity this reads like the entire acquisition of xAi is based on "Elon's napkin math" (maybe he checked it with Grok)

Thanks for putting words to that; the paragraph which most stuck out to me as outlandish is (emphasis mine):

    The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, *with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs*.

I'm deeply disillusioned to arrive at this conclusion but the Occam's Razor in me feels this whole acquisition is more likely a play to increase the perceptual value of SpaceX before a planned IPO.

> but they cost 1000x as much

Compute power has increased more than 1000x while the cost came down.

I recall paying $3000 for my first IBM PC.

> they need to last years and not fail

Not if they are cheap enough to build and launch. Quantity has a quality all its own.

First of all Twitter had basically no downtime since he bought it, so all the 'internet experts' posting their thoughts were completely dead wrong. If anything Twitter was far more reliable than Microsoft has been these past few years.

You are assuming things need to run the same way in space, for instance you mentioned fans, you won't have any in space. You also won't have any air, dust, static, or any moving parts.

You are assuming the costs to launch to orbit are high, when the entire point of Spacex's latest ship is to bring the cost to launch so low that it is cheaper per ton than an airplane flight.

Maintenance would be nice but you are saying this like Elon Musk's company doesn't already manage the most powerful datacenters on the planet.

You have no clue what you are talking about regarding cosmic rays and solar wind, these will literally be solar powered and behind panels and shielding 100% of the time.

Might be why he's also investing in building their own fabs - if he can keep the silicon costs low then that flips a lot of the math here.

Maintaining modern accelerators requires frequent hands-on intervention -- replacing hardware, reseating chips, and checking cable integrity.

Because these platforms are experimental and rapidly evolving, they aren't 'space-ready.' Space-grade hardware must be 'rad-hardened' and proven over years of testing.

By the time an accelerator is reliable enough for orbit, it’s several generations obsolete, making it nearly impossible to compete or turn a profit against ground-based clusters.

AI clusters are heavily interconnected, the blast radius for single component failure is much larger than running single nodes -- you would fragment it beyond recovery to be able to use it meaningfully.

I can't get in detail about real numbers but it's not doable with current hardware by a large margin.

How people still believe his bullshit is unfathomable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources

In situ manufacturing. You just have to send enough to build the thing that builds the factory.

You can make propellant on the Moon (aluminum based solid fuels), and the energy to get into orbit or into deep space is far, far less that from Earth’s surface.

It would appeal to naive technofetishists, the same crowd of investors enamored by many of Elon's other impossible schemes.

The moon mfg makes significantly more sense than the hilarious plan to establish a permanent Mars base in the next 50 years, but that's not saying much.

> Why would satellites be manufactured on the moon? There's nothing on the moon. The raw materials would have to be ferried over first. What would be the point?

From lunar regolith you would extract: oxygen, iron, aluminum, titanium, silicon, calcium, and magnesium.

From the poles you can get fuel (water ice -> water + hydrogen + oxygen).

The real constraint is not materials, but rather power generation, automation reliability, and initial capital investment.

So you have to shuttle machines, energy systems, and electronics.

The moon can supply mass, oxygen, fuel, and structure.

Satellites that would benefit most are: huge comms platforms, space-based power satellites, large radar arrays, deep-space telescopes, etc.

We seem to be using 100% of our DRAM manufacturing for AI. So it's not completely out of the question.

But there are no clouds in space and with the right orbit they are always facing the sun

The dominant factor is "balance of system" aka soft costs, which are well over 50%.[0]

Orbit gets you the advantage of 1/5th the PV and no large daily smoothing battery, but also no on-site installation cost, no grid interconnect fees, no custom engineering drawings, no environmental permitting fees, no grid of concrete footers, no heavy steel frames to resist wind and snow loads. The "on-site installation" is just the panels unfolding, and during launch they're compact so the support structure can be relatively lightweight.

When you cost building the datacenter alone, it's cheaper on earth. When you cost building the solar + batteries + datacenter, it (can be) cheaper in space, if you build it right and have cheap orbital launch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_system

Right now it is.

However, the amount of available land is fixed and the demand for its use is growing. Solar isn't the only buyer in this real estate market.

and of course, the continuous opposite boost needed to prevent the heat vent from knocking them out of orbit.

Solar modules you can buy for your house usually have quoted power ratings at "max STC" or Standard Testing Conditions, which are based on insolation on Earth's surface.

https://wiki.pvmet.org/index.php?title=Standard_Test_Conditi...

So, a "400W panel" is rated to produce 400W at standard testing conditions.

I'm not sure how relevant that is to the numbers being thrown around in this thread, but thought I'd provide context.

The atmosphere is in the way, and they get pretty dirty on earth. Also it doesn't rain or get cloudy in space

Satellites can adjust attitude so that the panels are always normal to the incident rays for maximum energy capture. And no weather/dust.

You also don't usually use the same exact kind of panels as terrestrial solar farms. Since you are going to space, you spend the extra money to get the highest possible efficiency in terms of W/kg. Terrestrial usually optimizes for W/$ nameplate capacity LCOE, which also includes installation and other costs.

Atmospheric derating brings insolation from about 1.367KW/m2 to about 1.0.

And then there’s that pesky night time and those annoying seasons.

It’s still not even remotely reasonable, but it’s definitely much higher in space.

I grew up on a rural farm in California with a dial-up connection that significantly hampered my ability to participate in the internet as a teenager. I got Starlink installed at my parents' house about five years ago, and it's resulted in me being able to spend considerably more time at home.

Even with their cheapest home plan, we're getting like 100 Mbps down and maybe 20 to 50 up. So it's just not true at all that you would have connections that are a megabit or two per second.

That's pretty much a solved problem. We've had geostationary constellations for TV broadcast at hundreds of megabytes for decades now, and lasers for sat-to-sat comms seems to be making decent progress as well.

The intractable problem is heat dissipation. There is to little matter in space to absorb excess heat. You'd need thermal fins bigger than the solar cells. The satellite's mass would be dominated by the solar panels and heat fins such that maybe 1% of the mass would be usable compute. It would be 1000x easier to leave them on the moon and dissipate into the ground and 100000x easier to just keep making them on earth.

and, of course and inter-satellite comms and earth base station links to get the data up and down. Starlink is one thing at just above LEO a few hundred km and 20km apart, but spreading these around 10s of thousands of km and thosands of km apart is another thing

You missed the point.

We can make ten or hundred times the number of solar cells we make right now, we just don't have a reason to. The technology is fairly ancient unless you want to compete on efficiency, and the raw materials abundant.

What do you mean?

What do you think the limiting factor is? I don't see why we can't scale manufacturing of satellites up as far as we want. If we mine out a substantial fraction of the mass of the earth, we can go harvest asteroids or something.

But the factory ~~can~~must grow.

You know what they mean. Full self-driving was promised what, 10 years ago? Tesla Roadster? Sub-25K car? etc etc etc

I should say delivering promised products.

Anyway they just canned the S and X lines so that's done as well...

What kind of nonsense is that. SpaceX 2024 revenue barely broke $10B, if that. Launch was probably ~$4B and Starlink probably ~$5B. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and double those just for shits and giggles and that's still less than $20B and you're claiming >$100B? Horse shit. Nonsense.

What is tiring is people defending it. Everyone goes down with this ship...