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NottaScotta's avatar

These guys are idiots, all. If it costs 20x-50x to put centers in space and we only get sunlight on earth 50% of the time, it's a better solution to put 2X the solar panels on the ground, where we can get to them, maintain and upgrade the chips/panels, and save the propulsion/insertion costs to put 1/2 the quantity of panels in orbit. This doesn't even take a bar napkin to calculate.

Spend the excess to get fusion working or breeder reactors working ( thorium ) and use fission, which we have mastered. That is a much shorter and more reasonable development path for power.

Musk is brain dead. His supporters are too vapid to see it. A million satellites? His big Starship can not current lift anything. This is mass delusion, starting with him and all I can conclude is that the other AI folks are doing is matching his hype for fear of losing out.

AI and data centers have some serious problems and implications, even on earth. Putting them in space is exponentially more insane.

Alastair Williams's avatar

Yes. Any investment in the space tech needed would be far better spent on improving the technology needed for data centres on the ground. To me it looks more like an effort to pump SpaceX stock before he goes for an IPO.

The Rebel Stargazer's avatar

I hope you are right about the idea of a million plus xAI satellites (and the others) not actually getting off the ground, because right now there's a lot of worry that a) the night sky will be completely ruined by the satellites outnumbering the stars and b) the environmental impacts of satellite disposal by re-entry into the atmosphere.

Alastair Williams's avatar

A million satellites is just not going to happen. You would have to launch 100 satellites every day for 30 years just to get close to that number. It looks more like an attention grabbing number rather than any serious effort. Its also not the first time Musk has announced a huge number of satellites and then just not delivered them.

Mike Cox's avatar

You don’t have to be an engineer working in the technology sector, as I was before I retired, to realize how quickly that fantastic new computer or server you just got becomes an old, antiquated, slow, buggy piece of crap in comparison to what is next available. I haven’t heard of any quick and inexpensive methods for hardware updates in orbit, nor are there any available recycling centers out there. As they say, this isn’t “rocket science” - so whom are they trying to fool?