“Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling,” Musk wrote. “Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment.”
Something is not adding up here.
25 kW is an upper-end ballpark for the output of large satellite solar panels, so 25GW is a proxy for the output of 1,000,000 satellites. China installs that amount of solar on a monthly basis these days & in December installed twice that amount of grid storage batteries. SpaceX’s larger satellites are costing about $1 million to manufacture these days (so without launch costs), that’s $1 trillion dollars. I don’t know how much China is spending on its solar & batteries every month, but I’d guess, at most, it’s 2-3% of that.
With SpaceX due to launch an IPO, this sounds like another AI bubble in the (attempted) making, but now with NASA downgraded, it’s the US’s main space launch capacity hitched along for the ride.
This should concern taxpayers, as if/when the AI-bubble bursts, it will present the US space program with two terrible choices - a SpaceX that has failed, or perhaps worse, that is ‘too-big-to-fail’.
Elon is tying the AI endeavors to Spacex because he can see he wasted a bunch of money on AI and is hoping to dilute the losses with a spacex IPO
Elon being the richest man in the world kinda makes me believe in deals with the devil.
The evil cream rises to the top or whatever, I think you can’t get there without making many morally compromising decisions that chip away at your humanity. Then you have to make up reasons to rationalize your success and you end up with effective altruism and divine right of kings and other such nonsense.
Its more that barring space X. I don’t really see why his companies are worth so much.
Fair, no idea why investors continue to put money in
He is; that devil is currently sitting in the White House.
Fuck all this satellite bullshit. Just a massive waste of minerals, build infrastructure here on Earth, where we can recycle stuff.
More “creative accounting” from Elon.
Space x is fucking fools gold. Invest in rocketlab is you want a reputable rocket company with tons of intentional contracts
Fucking yikes
Weren’t there a load of weird M&A just before the dotcom bubble burst?
Yup. Trying to save key assets and houses.
So this is the end of space exploration and science in the states isn’t it?
They butchered NASA to basically replace it with SpaceX, and now he’s going to combine it with a failing company that will kill both. Nothing will be left and clawing back funding to bring NASA back will be close to impossible.
Kessler syndrome soon
