Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
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@fazalmajid No, because the density of particles in orbit falls off as the inverse cube of their altitudeโthe volume of space around Earth is vast, and the probability of an impact is a function of the particle density at any given altitude and how long your payload spends there on the way up. Starship could plausibly deliver comsat constellations to altitudes much higher than the overcrowded 200km orbits Starlink is crammed into, where impact probability is far lower.
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@bitterkarella @cstross @tony @polypunk
This email exchange particularly but there are at least 2 others I've seen (one of which looked like he actually made it to the island)
George B (@gbargoud@masto.nyc)
Attached: 1 image @davidgerard@circumstances.run @quixoticgeek@v.st Here's a sample from the latest Epstein emails dump coincidentally on the same day he decided to make a big orbital data center announcement
Masto.NYC (masto.nyc)
"sorry Elon, we're... Err.....away that weekend.... and anyway I don't think I'm gonna do anymore parties...."
<gestures at all the other half naked orgy goers to be quiet >
".... yeah, so maybe another time?.... OK, love you, bye"
<hangs up, naked mariachi band strikes up, Bill Gates stage dives into pit of naked girls>
"..... Jesus Ghislaine, how did he get my new number?"
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross
I still keep trying to think of any reason, at all, to put a data center in orbit. Obviously musk is going for stock but Nvidia also said something about this a year ago ( or was it someone else?).It's literally the dumbest possible idea to the point where I tried to figure out if relativity helps at all since time would move faster (short answer - not nearly enough).
Heat, power, size, latency, repairability - there's genuinely no upside
It's a weird one
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross
His real goal is getting price of payload to previous down another 100x.
He's already massively reduced the price with space x (for starlink) but it may be that doing it again will be harder -
Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross Musk's whole hustle is to make increasingly grandiose claims to inflate his stocks. None of his big ideas ever materialize though. If Musk were credible, we'd have a colony on Mars by now (among much else that is simply never going to happen). It's so frustrating that the media continue to neutrally report his bombastic nonsense as if he wasn't just the world's most successful confidence trickster.
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@cstross Musk's whole hustle is to make increasingly grandiose claims to inflate his stocks. None of his big ideas ever materialize though. If Musk were credible, we'd have a colony on Mars by now (among much else that is simply never going to happen). It's so frustrating that the media continue to neutrally report his bombastic nonsense as if he wasn't just the world's most successful confidence trickster.
@ApostateEnglishman "None of the big ideas ever materialize" except the launcher with the payload of the space shuttle at $12M/flight that is *more reusable* than the shuttle ( 8 day turnaround between flights! 50 reuses per booster and climbing!) or disrupting the car industry by making EVs sexy. Or the low orbit comsat cluster.
Most of his bullshit evaporates on close inspection or goes wrongโbut enough of it works to keep everything afloat.
(Shun anything he says about software, though.)
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross Yup. Nail on head. It's all meme hype now.
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@ApostateEnglishman "None of the big ideas ever materialize" except the launcher with the payload of the space shuttle at $12M/flight that is *more reusable* than the shuttle ( 8 day turnaround between flights! 50 reuses per booster and climbing!) or disrupting the car industry by making EVs sexy. Or the low orbit comsat cluster.
Most of his bullshit evaporates on close inspection or goes wrongโbut enough of it works to keep everything afloat.
(Shun anything he says about software, though.)
@cstross @ApostateEnglishman sort of like how Tesla is down 46% in sales this year and no longer the #1 electric car but that's alright, were going to male robots instead. -
Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross Yes. But selling this *idea* is still likely to be very bad for any rational and responsible use of our orbital space.
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@cstross @ApostateEnglishman sort of like how Tesla is down 46% in sales this year and no longer the #1 electric car but that's alright, were going to male robots instead.
@Nimbius666 @ApostateEnglishman Musk is trying to ride the AI bubble. Seems he hasn't realized he's riding it like Slim Pickens:
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross the "invisible hand of the market"
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@ApostateEnglishman "None of the big ideas ever materialize" except the launcher with the payload of the space shuttle at $12M/flight that is *more reusable* than the shuttle ( 8 day turnaround between flights! 50 reuses per booster and climbing!) or disrupting the car industry by making EVs sexy. Or the low orbit comsat cluster.
Most of his bullshit evaporates on close inspection or goes wrongโbut enough of it works to keep everything afloat.
(Shun anything he says about software, though.)
@cstross I mean, yeah. I stand partially corrected. Enough of it works to keep the hustle alive. On the other hand, how many failed launches has SpaceX had? How many potentially fatal design flaws do Teslas have? The list goes on and on.
Next we'll have humanoid robots that occasionally decide to go on killing sprees, or explode. Or are so easy to hack remotely that owning one is essentially inviting every cybercriminal and spy agency into your home to follow you around and take notes.
โ
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@cstross Yes. But selling this *idea* is still likely to be very bad for any rational and responsible use of our orbital space.
@FaithfullJohn Well yes, but we need to criticize it because it's bullshit: "rational and responsible use" have nothing to do with the stock market.
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@cstross I'd be interested in finding out if Scott Manley got anything wrong here.
His take, as I understand it, is basically (1) the physics makes it complicated but not non-doable, and (2) can't be profitable now but may well be so within the foreseeable future -- making it likely that whoever gets there first, even before it's profitable, stands to make the usual absurd amounts of money (especially if orbital access is never properly regulated) once it does become cheap enough for it to be profitable.
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@raymaccarthy @oldgeek @lucien The point of starlink is low latency, which means low orbit. Which in turn requires lots of them to ensure there are no gaps in coverage. (And now they're working on satellite-to-satellite high bandwidth laser mesh networking to increase capacity.)
I think you underestimate the scale of aviation and shipping, not to mention railway transport.
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@jb I don't approve of capitalism occupying Earth orbit; my point was that (at least according to Manley, and what I do understand of physics and orbital mechanics) it's not implausible that what the Muskrat is doing here is actually sensible from a capitalist standpoint.
His whole existence is a grift, and he needs to be stopped, but this particular part of it seems far less of a con than (e.g.) the "cybertruck".
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@cstross I mean, yeah. I stand partially corrected. Enough of it works to keep the hustle alive. On the other hand, how many failed launches has SpaceX had? How many potentially fatal design flaws do Teslas have? The list goes on and on.
Next we'll have humanoid robots that occasionally decide to go on killing sprees, or explode. Or are so easy to hack remotely that owning one is essentially inviting every cybercriminal and spy agency into your home to follow you around and take notes.
โ๏ธ@ApostateEnglishman You ask about failed SpaceX launches: turns out Falcon 9 has launched 606 times with 603 mission successes. 3 launch failures total, none in the past 11 years. It's *ridiculously* reliable compared to any of its rivals.
(Falcon 1โdiscontinuedโwas a buggy prototype; Starship is trying to get past that.)
(Tesla is not going to give us humanoid robots, not beyond showroom rigged demos targeting the investors' wallets. And I'm NOT having one of those brain implants, no way!)
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
there is nothing more guaranteed for pygmy ponies on springs to be sold as anti-gravity unicorns with lasers than an IPO road show for tech....
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@jb I don't approve of capitalism occupying Earth orbit; my point was that (at least according to Manley, and what I do understand of physics and orbital mechanics) it's not implausible that what the Muskrat is doing here is actually sensible from a capitalist standpoint.
His whole existence is a grift, and he needs to be stopped, but this particular part of it seems far less of a con than (e.g.) the "cybertruck".
@woozle @jb Tough luck: all we've got in orbit today is capitalism, plus a couple of government-funded puppet shows showcasing "space science" while paying huge back-handers to corporations.
This is the reason we can't have nice things. (I prefer the term "crapitalism" to "enshittification", but you get the picture either way.)
