Comment by tokyobreakfast
10 hours ago
> For one thing, in what fantasy world would the ongoing operational and maintenance needs be 0?
Do you not understand how satellites work? They don't send repair people into space.
This has been a solved problem for decades before the AI gold rush assumed they have some new otherworldly knowledge to teach the rest of the world.
> Do you not understand how satellites work?
Not trying to be rude - but it's you who doesn't understand how satellites work.
The U.S. has 31 GPS satellites in orbit right now. The operational cost of running those is $2 million/day.
Not to mention the scale of these satellites would be on the order of 10x-100x the size of the ISS, which we do send people to perform maintenance.
I fly satellites. None of them have a zero operational cost. None. Even the most automated cost money to keep running.
The problem is not solved and the techniques they use to deal with it run directly contrary to maximizing compute, because that's not historically something they have remotely cared about.
The problem is solved by making satellites extremely expensive.