Current SpaceX design is 75 kW of computer per ton, including solar panels, radiators, everything: https://www.spacex.com/spacexai/starmind

That's ~13 tons per megawatt, or 1,330 tons for 100 MWs. That's 13 launches of Starship (at $10 million per launch, or $130 million). Of course, that's probably 600 individual satellites, at maybe $5 million per, so we're at ~$3 billion to deploy 100 MW to space.

You can sell 100 MW of compute for $3-4 billion per year, so SpaceX would make their money back in 1 year.

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vel0city 18 hours ago | parent [-]

> Current SpaceX design is 75 kW of computer per ton, including solar panels, radiators, everything

Anyone can make a website. Let's see them actually make it and put it in orbit.

According to another Musk website we'd be riding hyperloops and drive through solo tunnels under our cities and we'd all own our own autonomous cab companies back in 2016.

Another website said we'd be able to buy a Cybertruck for $40k and the three-motor variety for $70k.

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solid_fuel 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's amazing. These guys see a conman with a history of lies and failures - hyperloop, cybertruck, full self driving teslas, robotaxi fleets - and somehow all their critical thinking goes out the window.

Let's just trust him this time guys, he's definitely going to nail it.

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GMoromisato 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Okay, so you admit that they are possible, but they just might cost more than expected?

That's actually a reasonable prediction.

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vel0city 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've got little doubt they can put some kind of compute in orbit. Shit, load a tiny model on the next batch of Starlink birds, boom, space AI datacenter done. Will it be anywhere close to the numbers they're claiming? Will it actually be useful and competitive to terrestrial datacenters? I guess we'll see.

Did the Cybertruck have 500mi of range? Was there a $40k model at launch?

	▲	GMoromisato 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think we're in full agreement. I don't know if orbital datacenters will work out--it depends on the price of launch and the price of tokens in 2030. Maybe they'll try it and abandon it. We'll see. But my point is that if it does work, if they can be cheaper than terrestrial tokens, then SpaceX can dominate the market because no one else is even close to being able to deploy orbital compute. And if it doesn't work, SpaceX will be fine because they are printing money with Starlink. Cybertruck is a good example--they never hit their sales targets, but Tesla is fine because they are making money on Model Y and they are investing in Robotaxi (which has a bigger potential than Cybertruck anyway). And if Robotaxi doesn't work out, they will pivot to a cheaper model or something. SpaceX will be fine, not because orbital datacenters are guaranteed, but because they keep betting on things that may or may not work, but if they do work, they make a ton of money.

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grim_io 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Many things are possible while still being very stupid.