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[return to "xAI joins SpaceX"]
1. gok+h4[view] [source] 2026-02-02 22:06:22
>>g-mork+(OP)
> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power

We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.

edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun's power. A few trillionths per year.

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2. moeadh+Lf[view] [source] 2026-02-02 22:47:12
>>gok+h4
In fairness, solar cells can be about 5x more efficient in space (irradiance, uptime).
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3. cowsan+Yn[view] [source] 2026-02-02 23:19:09
>>moeadh+Lf
It is more than 5x less expensive to get surface area on earth’s surface.
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4. schiff+nw[view] [source] 2026-02-02 23:58:01
>>cowsan+Yn
The dominant factor is "balance of system" aka soft costs, which are well over 50%.[0]

Orbit gets you the advantage of 1/5th the PV and no large daily smoothing battery, but also no on-site installation cost, no grid interconnect fees, no custom engineering drawings, no environmental permitting fees, no grid of concrete footers, no heavy steel frames to resist wind and snow loads. The "on-site installation" is just the panels unfolding, and during launch they're compact so the support structure can be relatively lightweight.

When you cost building the datacenter alone, it's cheaper on earth. When you cost building the solar + batteries + datacenter, it (can be) cheaper in space, if you build it right and have cheap orbital launch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_system

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5. ericd+sM[view] [source] 2026-02-03 01:41:20
>>schiff+nw
Yeah, soft costs like permitting and inspections are supposedly the main reason US residential solar costs $3/watt while Australian residential solar costs $1/watt. It was definitely the worst and least efficient part of our solar install, everything else was pretty straightforward. Also, running a pretty sizable array at our house, the seasonal variation is huge, and seasonal battery storage isn’t really a thing.

Besides making PV much more consistent, the main thing this seems to avoid is just the red tape around developing at huge scale, and basically being totally sovereign, which seems like it might be more important as tensions around this stuff ramp up. There’s clearly a backlash brewing against terrestrial data centers driving up utility bills, at least on the East Coast of the US.

The more I think about it, the more this seems like maybe not a terrible idea.

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