Comment by drewda

Boom is not a serious endeavor.

They have not committed to an engine. There is no engine commercially available to buy and no engine producer has committed to creating one.

[dead]

Boom is planning to operate at Mach 1.7 (approx. twice that of current aircraft) with a range of about 4250 nautical miles (4900 miles, 7900 km). Over land they're only going to fly at Mach 1.3 to reduce sonic boom effects.

That's not enough range to do London - Sydney, it's not enough to do Los Angeles to Sydney either, or Los Angeles to Tokyo, it's basically a replacement for trans-Atlantic flights only because even US cross-continental Mach 1.3 is only about 50% faster than a 737 (3h vs. 5h)... It's pretty much geared to the prestige market only.

Under an hour to anywhere on the planet, meanwhile, is absolutely someone would be a premium for -- and they'll do it for most/all long haul flights if it was available.

We've been through it over and over. "Tesla is not a car company it's a X company" where X is the current trending theme.

So far, Tesla has been a blockchain, energy, robotics, and now a compute company.

Neither was reuse of rockets and I remember the ex-boss of Arianespace laughing at those bozos of SpaceX who try to pretend that they are a serious space business.

Musk made some bad bets, but also some good ones (Falcon rockets, Starlink) and some at least promising ones (Starship, Neuralink). And Twitter bought him enormous political influence - I wouldn't consider this a failure either, from the realistically-cynical point of view. That cannot be measured by revenue alone.

It was also hard for many people to imagine a reusable booster, a belly flopping Starship, catching the largest booster ever built with “chopsticks”, a 10,000 satellite constellation, etc.

Orbital compute is technically very feasible. We’re not talking about a datacenter-sized structure, but a lot of rack-sized satellites connected by laser links. SpaceX has gotten pretty good at building, launching, and managing large constellations.

Economically it obviously it has challenges, but there are some advantages (6x solar production, free real estate, less regulation, arguably simpler cooling) to balance the extra costs (launch, radiators, lack of access for maintenance, limited lifespan, etc).

There's no laws in space, which is the key.

You should actually stop and try to imagine it, or failing that, read some of the proposals from companies who want to do it.

None involve launching buildings.

You can look at their models for comparisons with Kansas. There is literature and papers you can read about this. Some go back decades if you include space power transmission, which are related.

That's the cool part, scoofy. You don't need to understand how it will work, you don't need to take any physics classes, round up enough investors, seek out and explain the basic ideas with the people who will make it happen, or invent anything new. Nor do you need to understand political sciences, taxation, jurisdictions, supply chains, or anything else needed to understand the question behind the Data Centers in Space solution.

You aren't even being roped into it with taxes, nor do you have to buy a single share. Other than willingly reading about it on whichever news sources you choose, your observed life will not change a single bit.

You can choose to seek out that info, or you can remain blissfully ignorant. But please don't join the online cacophony of people polluting the threads thinking everyone wants to understand just how ignorant they are.

I get it, I really do. It's a hard task and you don't understand it. But WHY do you feel the need to share that you don't understand? Do you think it makes you look smarter? Do you feel like you fit in more now? If you seek to understand, why aren't you asking questions??

Yes but the statement is in fact a milestone to meet in order to vest Class B stock options, specifically SPCX needs to put 100 terawatts of compute [1] in outer space and beam it back to somewhere, my guess is Earth.

There's even more rewards for putting a million people on Mars and reaching a market cap of 7.5T by a certain date. Oh yeah he has to stay employed too.

From the SEC Form 3 filed June 12th: 1) This Form 3 does not include 1,302,072,285 shares of restricted Class B Common Stock issued to and held of record by the Reporting Person, which may be voted by the Reporting Person, and the vesting of which is subject to the satisfaction of certain performance and other conditions. 1,000,000,000 shares of restricted Class B Common Stock vest upon (i) the Issuer's achievement of specified market capitalization milestones across 15 equal tranches ranging from $500 billion to $7.5 trillion, with each milestone reflecting $500 billion in additional valuation, and (ii) the Issuer's establishment of a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants, in each case, subject to the Reporting Person's continued employment ("SpaceX CEO Award"). 302,072,285 shares of restricted Class B Common Stock vest upon (i) the Issuer's achievement of specified market capitalization milestones across 12 equal tranches ranging from $1.065 trillion to $6.565 trillion, with each milestone reflecting $500 billion in additional valuation, and (ii) the Issuer's completion of non-Earth-based data centers capable of delivering 100 terawatts of compute per year, in each case, subject to the Reporting Person's continued employment ("AI CEO Award")

Why is this the case? I want him to be correct, but I am also skeptical.

The way people just casually use that word again now is so sad. And I don't even mean that in an "I'm offended" way, but more of "I'm embarrassed by the way you're trying to be offensive" way.

There's no need to use slurs.

Energy will be the biggest bottleneck to data centers on land. Is not an issue in space. Space is the perfect env for running compute.