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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. rainsf+RA[view] [source] 2026-02-03 00:24:23
>>gok+h4
We also shouldn't overlook the fact that the proposal entirely glosses over the implication of the alternative benefits we might realize if humanity achieved the incredible engineering and technical capacity necessary to make this version of space AI happen.

Think about it. Elon conjures up a vision of the future where we've managed to increase our solar cell manufacturing capacity by two whole orders of magnitude and have the space launch capability for all of it along with tons and tons of other stuff and the best he comes up with is...GPUs in orbit?

This is essentially the superhero gadget technology problem, where comic books and movies gloss over the the civilization changing implications of some technology the hero invents to punch bad guys harder. Don't get me wrong, the idea of orbiting data centers is kind of cool if we can pull it off. But being able to pull if off implies an ability to do a lot more interesting things. The problem is that this is both wildly overambitious and somehow incredibly myopic at the same time.

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3. somena+Z91[view] [source] 2026-02-03 04:46:36
>>rainsf+RA
A lot of great inventions we now take for granted initially came with little motivation other than being able to kill each other more effectively. GPS, radar, jet engines, drones, super glue, microwaves, canned food, computers, even the internet. Contrary to the narrative of the internet being about sharing science, ARPANET was pushed by the DoD as a means of maintaining comms during nuclear war. It was then adopted by universities and research labs and started along the trajectory most are more familiar with.

The tale of computers is even more absurd. The first programmable, electric, and general-purpose digital computer was ENIAC. [1] It was built to... calculate artillery firing tables. I expect in the future that the idea of putting a bunch of solar into space to run GPUs for LLMs will probably seem, at the minimum - quaint, but that doesn't mean the story ends there.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

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4. Walter+ob1[view] [source] 2026-02-03 05:00:29
>>somena+Z91
The digital internet began with the telegraphy network in the early 1800s.

Many, many network protocols were developed and used.

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5. little+hl1[view] [source] 2026-02-03 06:36:15
>>Walter+ob1
> with the telegraphy network in the early 1800s.

Late 1700 actually, and war was indeed a key motivation for the deployment of the Télégraphe Chappe.

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6. Walter+ot1[view] [source] 2026-02-03 07:47:07
>>little+hl1
See "The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers"

https://www.amazon.com/dp/162040592X

Télégraphe Chappe was a semaphore system using flags. It was not an electrical telegraph, nor was it binary.

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7. little+C82[view] [source] 2026-02-03 12:52:27
>>Walter+ot1
It wasn't binary nor electrical, but it was already digital. Excluding it would be arbitrarily restrictive.
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8. DrPhis+sF2[view] [source] 2026-02-03 15:44:45
>>little+C82
Wouldn’t you also need to include the Ancient Greek phryctoriae military fire signalling system by that logic? It probably wasn’t the first, at that.
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