alt Hacker NewsThe only place where a space data center makes sense is in Mars orbit to reduce the amount of mass that needs to be landed. Every thing else is a smoke and mirrors game to justify rolling a bunch of failed businesses into SpaceX.
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What specifically do you disagree with from the article to say its Smoke and Mirrors? I think their analysis is reasonable and that it will reduce to a launch cost problem.
"Failed businesses" is some insane cope.
The impulse to discredit someone's "art" because of their politics has always stuck me as incredibly juvenile.
It's as if people can't imagine competence - even in some narrow way - in someone who doesn't share all their exact beliefs.
It seems especially silly because literally every great man and woman of history shares only a tiny fraction of our modern beliefs.
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Even then. If you're building a million satellites, they only need to be about 42 meters long for you to make them into a contiguous ring in LEO. Smaller (22.5m) or fewer (537,000) for the same in a 200 km orbit around Mars.
Do that, and you can quickly bootstrap an orbital ring and make rockets obsolete from surface to orbit of either body.
In the case of Mars, the planet-wide dust storms make it a good idea to locate your PV off-planet, and an orbital ring is also very convenient for that.