alt Hacker NewsThere's clearly rhetorical hyperbole happening there. But assuming that thermal rejection is good in space, & launch costs continue falling, as earth-based data centers become power/grid-constrained, there is a viable path for space power gen.
The craziest part of those statements is "100 kW per ton." IDK what math he is doing there or future assumptions, but today we can't even sniff at 10 kW per ton. iROSA [1] on the ISS is about 0.150 kW per ton.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll_Out_Solar_Array
edit: iROSA = 33 kW per ton, thanks friends
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The company lists their ISS solar panels as 28 kW for 331 kg, which comes pretty near to 100 W/kg.
Company website:
https://rdw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/redwire-roll-out-...
And their Opal configuration beats the metric: 5.3 kW for 42.7 kg.
Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but is solar substantially more efficient in space? I assume the satellites won't orbit in a way that follows the sun. And presumably the arrays of panels they can attach to a satellite don't exceed the size of the panels you could slap on and around a data center (at least without being insanely expensive).
> But assuming that thermal rejection is good in space
Don't assume this. Why would you assume this?
Just put a slightly larger solar array on the same equipment on earth?
"There's clearly rhetorical hyperbole happening there" in a business paper is called lying
Elon is a pathological liar and it’s crazy that he still gets sanewashed after all he’s done. It’s insanity that he hasn’t been kicked out of leading his companies, and it’s also insanity that he hasn’t been prosecuted by the SEC.
You’ve spent too much life force trying to even understand the liar’s fake logic.
Let’s start right here: there is no such thing as becoming power/grid constrained on earth. If you replaced just the cornfields that the United States uses just to grow corn for ethanol in gasoline just in the corn belt, you could power the entire country with solar+batteries+wind. Easily, and cheaply.
If you don’t even believe that solar+batteries are cheap (they are), fine, choose your choice of power plant. Nuclear works fine.
The truth is, xAI combining with SpaceX is almost certainly corrupt financial engineering. SpaceX as a government contractor and that means Elon’s pal Trump can now siphon money into xAI via the federal government.
Not to be an Elon defender, but can you back up your 0.15/ton? My own searching puts ROSA orders of magnitude higher. Each array is 600kg (0.6t) and puts out 20kw (https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/irosa-1.htm) which makes 20/0.6 = 33.333 kw/ton