2 pointsby avgarrison2 hours ago3 comments
  • jfengel42 minutes ago
    I just don't get it.

    It's really cool that SpaceX has the ability to put stuff in orbit without it being a billion-dollar event. But I don't see any advantage to having unmaintainable tech in orbit, where all you can do is throw away an entire satellite.

    What's the advantage? You can get solar power here on earth. We're not running out of land; we could put them in the middle of nowhere if we wanted, for way less than orbit.

    I just can't think of any reason why we'd do this, other than "it's cool". Which, fair, but it seems like a waste.

    • pfdietz34 minutes ago
      Well, I don't know if they're doing this, but PV can be much lighter in space. Much of the mass (and cost) of PV on Earth is structure to support it against gravity and weather. In space, a thin film PV array could be as little as a few microns thick (using for example CdTe, which absorbs light much more strongly than silicon).

      Combine that with the 5-10x higher production from being in constant unfiltered sunlight, and lack of need for storage, and it could well be much cheaper to make the power in space.

  • avgarrison2 hours ago
    How are they going to deal with the heat dissipation problem?
    • pfdietzan hour ago
      Why do you think they've suddenly become unable to do straightforward engineering? If they think they can handle that, they likely can.
    • sfmzan hour ago
      They already have space-based compute in terms of Starlink and Starshield. Is it much more difficult than that ?
      • chancitagan hour ago
        It is much more difficult than that. Starlink is essentially IT infrastructure, which certainly produces heat but nothing on the level of pure compute. Ejecting heat in space is a difficult problem that is currently solved on the ISS with large IR radiators which take up weight and space. The size, weight, power, cost tradeoffs lean heavily in favor of ground-based compute.
  • youngtaff2 hours ago
    According to the authors numbers it'll take at least 20,000 launched to put a million satellite's in orbit

    And that's before you consider the issues of operating a DC in space

    It's just a a load of nonsense

    • pfdietzan hour ago
      Why is 20,000 launches a load of nonsense?