Comment by hristov

9 hours ago

Currently, just a cursory google search shows $1500-3000 per kilogram to put something into low earth orbit. Lets take the low bound because of efficiencies of scale. So $1500.

A million tons will cost $1500x1000x1000000= 1,500,000,000,000. That is one and a half TRILLION dollars per year. That is only the lift costs, it does not take into account the cost of manufacturing the actual space data centers. Who is going to pay this?

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hristov

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pantalaimon  9 hours ago

That's the price before Starship which would be the prerequisite for this whole project.

  • vel0city  9 hours ago

    Yes, and as we know Starship will be doing regular commercial launches starting in 2020, maybe 2021.

    We're getting close to having the time for Starship's delays to be the same as the actual time for the Saturn 5 to go from plans to manned launches (Jan 1962-Dec 1968).

AnotherGoodName  9 hours ago

That launch cost is remarkably cheap to someone that's handled a $1.5million dollar 5U server filled with GPUs and RAM that weighs under 100kg.

Obviously the solar and cooling for the above would both weigh and cost a ton but... It's feels surprisingly close to being within an order of magnitude of current costs when you ballpark it?

Like i don't think it's actually viable, it's just a little shocking that the idea isn't as far out of line as i expected.