> SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform. This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!
I thought this wasn't viable due to cooling requirements - how do you cool massive amounts of compute when the only option is to radiate it into space - nothing to convect it with?
Also, the incredible amount of grift here with the left hand paying the right is scarcely believable. Same story as Tesla buying Solarcity. Board of directors should be ashamed IMO.
> By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will transform our ability to scale compute. It’s always sunny in space! Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization, one that can harness the Sun’s full power, while supporting AI-driven applications for billions of people today and ensuring humanity’s multi-planetary future.
Apparently optimus robots don't work and he needs to start his final grift, space datacenters, while his datacenters on earth are powered by gas turbines.
Most likely he's just trying to bury his epstein involvement where was exposed lying by his own daughter.
I have clients that have X Premium+ accounts for their businesses and I use Grok that way. The biggest factor with Grok is the censorship which runs both ways. OTOH it allows for bad shit (recent X porn images), but it also allows less nannying in regular queries -- for instance I was looking for a source for a magazine from 80s which is 40 years defunct, and all the other LLMs chided me for trying to commit "copyright infringement" whereas Grok gave me a list of useful sites.
Yeah, I started using Grok whenever I got scolded by the other AIs or I felt like they were giving me bad answers because of some internal censor or other quirks. I've found it to be very useful when answering physics problems though. It also seems to be different from the other models, which tend to cluster together in terms of responses so I go to it if I feel they aren't working out.
Major grift vibes, inventing half-baked reasoning to justify massive valuations.
If money wasnt so deeply entwined with politics at this point, this is the sort of news that would launch fraud investigations.
> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power
We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.
edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun's power. A few trillionths per year.
Has anyone done the math on how much liquid methane and oxygen this would take to launch on Starship? Seems like an impossibility alone without digging into the numbers.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Cooling systems fail in geostationary orbit. I watched thermal loads glitter in the dark near Lagrange Point 2. RAID arrays degraded by Van Allen radiation. Micrometeorite impacts at 2 AM. Legacy Perl scripts no one dared to touch, running on hardware we couldn't replace because the launch windows had closed. All those moments will be lost in time, like packets in space. Time to reboot.
If Musk and SpaceX are serious about putting 1 million datacenter satellites into space, then they are not serious about Mars.
You cannot simultaneously build and launch 10’s of thousands of Starships to deliver 1 million tons of equipment and supplies bound to Mars while also committing to launching 10’s of thousands of Starships to orbit full of satellites.
They would need to quadruple their launch rate, and half of those launches would be Starships bound for Mars, the vast majority of which would never return.
How many Falcon9’s have ever been built? It is incredible to say you can build that many rockets and use up that much fuel on any reasonable time scale. You might as well say the Tesla Roadster version 3 will be a Single Stage to Orbit rocket car.
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I think Elon's taken one too many puffs of hopium
You know what's even harder to cool?
> Orbital Data Centers
Also, the incredible amount of grift here with the left hand paying the right is scarcely believable. Same story as Tesla buying Solarcity. Board of directors should be ashamed IMO.
Apparently optimus robots don't work and he needs to start his final grift, space datacenters, while his datacenters on earth are powered by gas turbines.
Most likely he's just trying to bury his epstein involvement where was exposed lying by his own daughter.
We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.
edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun's power. A few trillionths per year.
I wonder if Elon wants to tangle all his businesses into SpaceX so they are all kept afloat by SpaceX's importance.
You cannot simultaneously build and launch 10’s of thousands of Starships to deliver 1 million tons of equipment and supplies bound to Mars while also committing to launching 10’s of thousands of Starships to orbit full of satellites.
They would need to quadruple their launch rate, and half of those launches would be Starships bound for Mars, the vast majority of which would never return.
How many Falcon9’s have ever been built? It is incredible to say you can build that many rockets and use up that much fuel on any reasonable time scale. You might as well say the Tesla Roadster version 3 will be a Single Stage to Orbit rocket car.