>>meetpa+(OP)
> In the right orbit, a solar panel can be up to 8 times more productive than on earth, and produce power nearly continuously, reducing the need for batteries.

Sure. Now do cooling. That this isn't in the "key challenges" section makes this pretty non-serious.

A surprising amount of the ISS is dedicated to this, and they aren't running a GPU farm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro...

>>meetpa+(OP)
Data centers in space are guaranteed to be a thing by 2035.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1984868748378157312

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1985743650064908694

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1984249048107508061

>>ceejay+a7
Barely mentioning thermal management seems at odds with the X principle of "Don’t use up all your resources on the easy stuff": https://blog.x.company/tackle-the-monkey-first-90fd6223e04d

>>pr337h+P7
0.5% of the starlink node network deorbits each month currently, though potentially more.

They're already having a negative, contaminating effect on our upper atmosphere

Sending up bigger ones, and more (today there's some 8,800, but they target 30k), sounds ill-advised.

1: https://www.fastcompany.com/91419515/starlink-satellites-are... 2: https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-ar...

>>ceejay+a7
How much are you ready to bet against Elon's plans to scale up Starlink v3 for GPUs? Starlink v3 already has a 60M length solar array, so they're already solving dissipation for that size. Assume linear scaling to many thousands of modules.

From https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1984249048107508061:

"Simply scaling up Starlink V3 satellites, which have high speed laser links would work. SpaceX will be doing this."

From https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1984868748378157312:

"Starship could deliver 100GW/year to high Earth orbit within 4 to 5 years if we can solve the other parts of the equation. 100TW/year is possible from a lunar base producing solar-powered AI satellites locally and accelerating them to escape velocity with a mass driver."

>>paulsu+xv
> How much are you ready to bet against Elon's plans to scale up Starlink v3 for GPUs?

I'm sure they'll be ready right after the androids and the robotaxi and the autonomous LA-NYC summoning.

> Starlink v3 already has a 60M length solar array, so they're already solving dissipation for that size.

Starlink v3 doesn't exist yet. They're renders at this point. Full-sized v2s haven't even flown yet, just mass simulators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Satellite_revisions

>>ceejay+Aq
> Now ask them to do the Australia / Los Angeles one.

> "lol no"

Given how many people dream of megastructures, I bet someone has this as an interview question, some variant of https://what-if.xkcd.com/160/ — I'd guess "a few trillion, tens of trillions of USD" for floating-bridges with anchors etc., but that's just my uninformed not-a-civil-engineer guess.