Cowboy space's application for stupidly ridiculous numbers of ludicrously large and probably impossible orbital "AI data centers" was SO BAD that the FCC asked them for loads of info.

[ghostonthehalfshell@masto.ai]

@sundogplanets

Here’s another nickname if you want: the scented one.

Let’s hope this atrocity has a shorter lifetime than hyper loop.

[grb090423@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets

Oh. Poo

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

So, their satellites will be 125m x 30m x 43m. "Cowboy Space has not yet completed its system design, but intends to design its satellites to achieve a casualty risk for an individual spacecraft of less than 0.0001 using NASA DAS"

HAHAHA wow. SpaceX provides ground casualty risks (zero, of course) that are completely unable to be replicated because they provide no info on their satellites. But they at least pretend that they've designed them already!

...Actually I'm not sure which is worse.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

For reference, according to Wikipedia the International Space Station is 109m x 94m x 73m. And they want to launch 20,000 of them. And they haven't actually designed them yet.

This is such a ridiculous load of bullshit. And yet, I have to respond to this shit otherwise the FCC will license it and then more poorly planned satellites will get launched (well, they will probably license it no matter what I do, but at least this provides legal documentation for future actions, I hope)

[weddige@gruene.social]

@sundogplanets how many of these satellites do they want to send up? 20000? Then the 0.0001 casualty rate doesn't sound very reassuring

[torynski@mastodon.scot]

@sundogplanets i am not a physicist (or you can say I am failed one, as I studied it but never graduated) but can someone explain it to me: what's the point of having AI datacentre in space? I am reading it's for cooling but how they are going to cool it, there is no atmosphere to disperse the heat, there is no water to cool them down...

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@TOrynski I think the point is that people can't protest them as easily... absolutely nothing about data centres makes them easier or better to operate in space.

[david@social.grelli.org]

@weddige@gruene.social
I'm unsure if it's to be read as a count or a probability.

If it's a count, we get 2 casualties over the whole fleet

If it's a probability, we get a 86.5% casualty probabilty

Neither sounds great

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

[torynski@mastodon.scot]

@sundogplanets we should be protesting bilionairs putting shit up in orbit more.

(btw, as per our conversation some time ago just recorded a podcast with an astronomer about Starlink, but unfortunately (for you :P) it's in Polish. But we recommend your mastodon account to follow in it)

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@TOrynski Glad you recorded a podcast episode in Polish about this! Did you by any chance manage to find out what ever happened with the SpaceX pieces that fell on Poland a couple years ago? Did silent SpaceX employees show up in a rented moving van? I'm so curious...

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@david @weddige They don't give any actual info in this document (and they may not actually understand what they are even talking about), but I believe this is a per satellite probability. So yeah, 2 casualties. No big deal.

[torynski@mastodon.scot]

@sundogplanets i asked about it, my guests says it was actually a rocket booster. We don't know what happened, other than the Polish government being annoyed and SpaceX totally ignoring its concerns, obviously.