Comment by neuronexmachina
9 hours ago
I'm basically assuming that "space-based data centers" are some Glomar Explorer-style cover for something else.
9 hours ago
I'm basically assuming that "space-based data centers" are some Glomar Explorer-style cover for something else.
Yeah, I agree. A massive radar network, passive or active is the most likely possibility I have come across. You'd need a LOT of compute at each node to get the most out of the network. I found this video[1] to be a pretty convincing analysis of the absolute max capability you could expect, and it would indeed be impressive.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A
Well, that likely already exists as Starshield - not to mention all the pubmic SAR sats everyone has by this point.
It's putting AI processing out of the reach of hostile local, state, and international governments. Does it need to be a cover?
> It's putting AI processing out of the reach of hostile local, state, and international governments
It isn't... the hostile local government can seize the ssh keys you use to control it and take it over just fine.
The hostile international non-local super power just gained a new ability to jam communications or destroy it with a bit of deniability too.
So, that's generally not something local governments do in the US. They do things like increasing taxes on data centers, denying water rights, electric interconnection rights, etc. (At least, all of this has been threatened against data centers.)
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Local, state and international governments who wanted to crack down on AI could just arrest and execute the owners. None of whom plan on living in space anytime soon.
>hostile ... international governments
you mean other than China, russia, NK and Iran?
SpaceX's launch capacity is an order of magnitude larger that all four of those put together.
6 replies →
Yeah, but any of those attacking US satellites means an apocalyptic war, and the provenance of the attack would be clear. You cannot exactly hide a suborbital rocket launch.
Even in Russian nationalist circles, the occassional idea of shooting down current Starlink satellites is usually met with derision from the rest of the discussion group (see, for example, topwar.ru comments). That is just step too far, too dangerous.
Meanwhile, on Earth, you have a lot of plausible deniability. "Some terrorist group sneaked in and planted a bomb, totally not our people."
A cover is going to have a plausible enough sounding justification that you’ll believe and defend
I assume because the Mars goal is as good as dead with what they're finding out about the complexities of building Starship that they can barely get it back down to this planet, never mind back from a second one.
This "space datacenters is more important than colonizing the universe" thing is just to deflect from what would be an inevitable failure because if they do this pivot, they can push out the timeline for that further than the original 2026 on Mars goal that they are about to wildly overshoot.
SpaceX perfected Falcon 9 reuse, they perfected Dragon, they perfected Starlink. Are you seriously going to bet they can't improve on the Space Shuttle? Which is what Starship/Super Heavy is, Space Shuttle idea implemented correctly.
"what they're finding out about the complexities of building Starship that they can barely get it back down to this planet, never mind back from a second one."
I would argue that complexities of building Starship are already a solved problem. Boca Chica built a lot more test units than there were (test or production) Apollos and the "factory for rockets, churning them out in regular intervals" part seems to be mastered. They even made three iterations of Raptor, and the third one looks really promising so far.
What is far from perfected is the heat shield and I agree that it is a critical problem.
"it, they can push out the timeline for that further than the original 2026 on Mars goal that they are about to wildly overshoot"
True, but this seems to be ubiquitous in space industry. I am old enough to remember talking about the US going back to the Moon in the 1990s. But the goal, declared by presidents (who have a lot more power at their hands to fulfill it) kept being pushed back and back, always into the next decade, then the next...
If you tolerated it from the government, you should probably tolerate the same from Musk, for the sake of consistency.
> they can barely get it back down to this planet
Being the first rocket in history where both parts reached the ground ready to land is a pretty good start.
And if Starship can't land then any space datacenters are just as or even more unlikely, so that explaition makes no sense what so ever.
Maybe coverage is directed outward from Earth ? It could be quite an upgrade to the "UFO" TV series SID (Space Intruder Detector).
The math works out if you project certain macro trends out a sufficient amount of time.
I think if fusion is real, it might not be so advantageous until space mining is a thing.
The more straightforward explanation is that it's a story that Elon (probably correctly) thinks will sound good to wall-street and enable him to take a ton of the publics money when SpaceX IPOs and gets added to the S&P for himself.
In other words good old fashioned plausibly deniable securities fraud.
As an investment narrative it was ideal to justify rolling Elon's unprofitable second tier AI company and the debt-ridden mess he made of Twitter into his highly successful space company, ensuring the investors in those get paid off by the SpaceX IPO...
They'll put up thousands more starlinks and track every mobile device on the planet simultaneously, might as well have a homing beacon in your pocket.
Check out this video that goes into a very deep technical explanation about how the satellites can be used as a Synthetic Aperature Radar to build a realtime representation of the entire globe at meters of resolution: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A
Oooh, yeah, this is going to be a key to it too, Gorgon Stare on steroids.