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Comment by JumpCrisscross

11 hours ago

> put a slightly larger solar array on the same equipment on earth?

Land and permitting. I’m not saying the math works. Just that there are envelopes for it to.

There is practically infinite land in which to build a datacenter.

  • > There is practically infinite land in which to build a datacenter

    This is absolutely not true. I’ve worked on some of this stuff. Permitting costs months, which in dollar terms pays for launch costs ten-fold.

The math literally works.

The US mandates by law that we grow a fuck ton of corn to mix 10% ethanol into gasoline.

If you replaced just those cornfields with solar/wind, they would power the entire USA and a 100% electric vehicle fleet. That includes the fact that they are in the corn belt with less than ideal sun conditions.

We aren’t even talking about any farmland that produces actual food or necessary goods, just ethanol as a farm subsidy program.

The US is already horrendously bad at land use. There’s plenty of land. There’s plenty of ability to build more grid capacity.