Space X does it again

The Satellite
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My “bias” against Elon isn’t partisan. However I do absolutely detest his decision to allow antisemitism, Nazi-ism, and other supremacists have free reign on X. I also absolutely detest his decisions on amplifying that from time to time as well as his actual statements and actions in that regard. Sure, he attempted to atone and learn from it visiting Israel, Yad Vashem, and advocating for the Oct 7 hostages, but he hasn’t stopped this same behavior and statements.

I also disagree with his actions as a special government employee, which I guess you could argue makes my “bias” partisan, but I disagreed with the actions themselves, not because they were linked to the current political party occupying the executive branch.

I am fascinated by his often overly ambitious statements about the future, which often don’t meet the deadlines he gives them. I am concerned as well about how many of his companies are integrated into our government because I don’t trust him to use that power in the best interest of the public or to not do something rash because he feels like it. However the same can be said about Peter Thiel/Planatir, and well even Jeff Bezos/Amazon but in all honesty I’m more neutral about Bezos. Also Gates/Microsoft, Ellison/Oracle, would be on the list but I’d probably put them more in the Bezos category.

Does Musk get more attention than any of those others? I’d say, yes but why? It is because he is continually putting himself and his companies out there in the spotlight.

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183

So is yours, by a country mile.

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I believe I said he also amplifies it.

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I am agreeing with you, fully.

Its the principle reason I dislike Elon now.

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187

Another Elon business move. Is it good, bad, genius or foolhardy?

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Well, this is certainly a novel idea…would love to see what a realistic timeline
looks like for data centers in space. What’s total cubic feet of all data centers on earth vs total cubic feet of orbital space for all of mankind to date ?

Musk said the combined company plans to explore space-based data centers powered by near-constant solar energy as a way to overcome those terrestrial power constraints.

Either he is sky high or brilliant.

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Most likely both.

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190

These transactions he does where one of his companies acquired another of his companies just would make me nervous if I was an investor. I’m not sure how these transactions can be done as a truly arm length transaction. I’d feel the same way about any companies that have the same controlling owner though. Guess it’s a good thing I’m not invested in either.

I’d really love to see the tax planning on them too, as related to his personal stake, and any potential capital gains.

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“Tax planning”

Don’t you think Elon has thought about that?

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Looking forward to Artemis 2. They just delayed it, no outrage about that though, and are re-scheduled for March, I’ll be in Orlando for spring break, if it works out I’ll go watch the launch.

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Of course he did, Chris. That’s why I said I wanted to see what that plan was, purely out of professional curiosity. I didn’t say “I hope he did tax planning”, although that’s certainly how you read it.

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Just realized that this also makes SpaceX the owner of X (formerly Twitter).

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His idea is to put a giant solar farm in orbit to power future AI data centers located in space. Free energy and free cooling.

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Service calls would be expensive… or would it be like the Maytag repair man just hanging out in a Space Station?

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Will require both heating and cooling. Difficult to cool in space actually-need lots of radiators. But yeah, the power would be limitless.

If you ever spent much time in a data center, a lot of the cubic feet of space is wasted. Way over 1/2 probably more like 3/4 of the space is built for humans to
work in. So the concept would probably be cylindrical shaped data centers launched with hardware in place. No humans for servicing, but intelligent mini bots…or maybe an optimus or two for large external tasks.

So need to reimagine what an orbital data center would look like. Probably nothing
like a terrestrial one.

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Looks like I’ll have a space certified phone to go along with my moon swatch. Along with the other billion iPhone users. Cool!

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Well, when Ralph finally sends Alice to the moon she will still be able to call for help.

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I think that most if not all satellites today require no maintenance, maybe it’ll be modular enough that if something went wrong they’d just let the module burn up in the atmosphere. But satellite tech is pretty reliable, gps, communications, weather radar, etc.

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True.

But these things would be much larger, packed with hundreds or thousands of processors. Fact is things break or start giving wrong answers in computing. Probably could just offline a set or subsets of nodes . Maybe it’s modular enough to self jettison a slow or problematic node(s) module but you probably want to be able to reuse the infrastructure (cooling, shielding , photovoltaic cells and batteries) , so might need some type of “helper” in that scenario to connect new modules

Should be fascinating to see if this concept can come to light or if it is pie in the sky