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SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

60 points by billybuckwheat

by tristanj

2 subcomments

Starlink has been so successful, it is facing a lot of competition in the next few years. Every major power wants their own, national starlink network.
China's state-backed starlink competitor GuoWang is putting 13,000 satellites in orbit by 2030. They've already started launching satellites.
China's Qianfan plans 15,000 satellites by 2030.
AST SpaceMobile is building their own network.
Amazon Leo plans for 3,000 satellites in orbit, and is already launching satellites.
The EU is building IRIS², explicitly as a Starlink alternative.
Russia, after realizing how critical starlink is on the battlefield, is building its own Rassvet network. They've already launched satellites.

by variety8675

3 subcomments

> Most people likely don’t think about how often they use satellite communications. But that Instagram post you made? You used a satellite.
This article seems to confuse Starlink with ordinary cellular communications

by wrs

5 subcomments

The people who want to put data centers in orbit must be either much smarter than me, or much dumber than me, because I just don't get how that makes any technical or economic sense.
Of course, it's possible nobody actually wants to do this, they just want to get funded to do it. (Old joke: "I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant...")

by amelius

3 subcomments

How long until they turn a constellation into a giant LED billboard, showing commercials for Tesla?

by GMoromisato

9 subcomments

I don't buy the opposition to orbital datacenters. I think that's just the perfect being the enemy of the good, which (sadly) is very common in environmental activism.
Let's assume two premises:
1. Demand for AI compute will continue to grow for the next 10 years. 2. The cost of orbital datacenters will approach the cost of terrestrial datacenters (in $ per token terms).
If you don't buy either of these two premises (and I agree that neither is guaranteed) then you don't have to worry. No one is going to waste money on orbital datacenters if they aren't profitable.
But if you buy the two premises above, then what matters is whether orbital or terrestrial datacenters are better for the environment. And it turns out that, given the current energy generation mix, the CO2 emissions from terrestrial datacenters far outstrip the CO2 from launch.
A 100MW datacenter will emit 1.5 million tons of CO2 over a 5 year lifetime (given average USA energy sources). In contrast, 10 Starship launches (~1,000 tons to orbit) will emit no more than 40,000 tons of CO2. Almost all other environmental effects will be proportional.
So, if you care about the environment, and you believe/fear that AI will demand a lot of compute, then you should hope that orbital datacenter work out. If you really care, you might even help to develop them.

by bastawhiz

2 subcomments

Who is paying for all this? Starlink revenue? I don't think so. To 100x what they've done over the last ten years and also fund it with money they're not being paid by others is implausible. They've got money, but they don't have THAT much money. They'd need to significantly juice up the whole rest of their business to not just be substantially more profitable, but also launch far more payloads. Does that much demand (for SpaceX) to get stuff into space even exist?

by saddat

0 subcomment

Relevant : https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

by thefounder

0 subcomment

So there must be a big story for the IPO….Remember that Tesla is still not selling actual/real self driving cars. I would say stock wise it would worth it to gable b/c Tesla did so well but SpaceX is being IPO-ed as it would have already have datacenters in space and ride hailing to Mars

by androiddrew

2 subcomments

Let me fix your title:
SpaceX wants investors to think that they will be able to launch millions of satellites.

by codingdave

2 subcomments

> ... data centres that won’t have an environmental impact here on Earth.
Really? I wonder how they are going to get them up there without rocket launches?

by cameldrv

0 subcomment

This seems like a recipe for Kessler syndrome.

by insane_dreamer

0 subcomment

At what point does the LEO space become too crowded? Is there some optimal density beyond which things are problematic?

by LightBug1

0 subcomment

Oh ffs ... how is the homebrew laser defense industry coming along?
Spec Priority: ability to attach said laser defense instrument to home telescope ... and enable user to blast those madafakkas out of the sky.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

1 subcomments

SpaceX wants to self-deal artificial demand for launches.

by ChrisArchitect

0 subcomment

March 8th story OP?
Some previous discussion:
A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598415
Part of this announcement:
xAI joins SpaceX
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862170

by jocelyner

0 subcomment

[dead]

by exabrial

2 subcomments

[flagged]

by johnea

1 subcomments

There is an upside: this may be the shortest route to eliminating any future launches:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Sorry Buck Rogers fan bois, should have left this fantasy in the 1950s...

by 6d6b73

2 subcomments

Spacex will cause Kessler syndrom and bring the world economy down.

by SilverElfin

5 subcomments

Should be banned. These companies are destroying a piece of the environment that belongs to all of us - the night sky.