Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross Yes. But selling this *idea* is still likely to be very bad for any rational and responsible use of our orbital space.
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@cstross @ApostateEnglishman sort of like how Tesla is down 46% in sales this year and no longer the #1 electric car but that's alright, were going to male robots instead.
@Nimbius666 @ApostateEnglishman Musk is trying to ride the AI bubble. Seems he hasn't realized he's riding it like Slim Pickens:
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross the "invisible hand of the market"
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@ApostateEnglishman "None of the big ideas ever materialize" except the launcher with the payload of the space shuttle at $12M/flight that is *more reusable* than the shuttle ( 8 day turnaround between flights! 50 reuses per booster and climbing!) or disrupting the car industry by making EVs sexy. Or the low orbit comsat cluster.
Most of his bullshit evaporates on close inspection or goes wrong—but enough of it works to keep everything afloat.
(Shun anything he says about software, though.)
@cstross I mean, yeah. I stand partially corrected. Enough of it works to keep the hustle alive. On the other hand, how many failed launches has SpaceX had? How many potentially fatal design flaws do Teslas have? The list goes on and on.
Next we'll have humanoid robots that occasionally decide to go on killing sprees, or explode. Or are so easy to hack remotely that owning one is essentially inviting every cybercriminal and spy agency into your home to follow you around and take notes.
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@cstross Yes. But selling this *idea* is still likely to be very bad for any rational and responsible use of our orbital space.
@FaithfullJohn Well yes, but we need to criticize it because it's bullshit: "rational and responsible use" have nothing to do with the stock market.
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@cstross I'd be interested in finding out if Scott Manley got anything wrong here.
His take, as I understand it, is basically (1) the physics makes it complicated but not non-doable, and (2) can't be profitable now but may well be so within the foreseeable future -- making it likely that whoever gets there first, even before it's profitable, stands to make the usual absurd amounts of money (especially if orbital access is never properly regulated) once it does become cheap enough for it to be profitable.
@woozle Libertarian orbital CSAM storage and generation is not a great argument in a bad idea’s favor.
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@raymaccarthy @oldgeek @lucien The point of starlink is low latency, which means low orbit. Which in turn requires lots of them to ensure there are no gaps in coverage. (And now they're working on satellite-to-satellite high bandwidth laser mesh networking to increase capacity.)
I think you underestimate the scale of aviation and shipping, not to mention railway transport.
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@jb I don't approve of capitalism occupying Earth orbit; my point was that (at least according to Manley, and what I do understand of physics and orbital mechanics) it's not implausible that what the Muskrat is doing here is actually sensible from a capitalist standpoint.
His whole existence is a grift, and he needs to be stopped, but this particular part of it seems far less of a con than (e.g.) the "cybertruck".
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@cstross I mean, yeah. I stand partially corrected. Enough of it works to keep the hustle alive. On the other hand, how many failed launches has SpaceX had? How many potentially fatal design flaws do Teslas have? The list goes on and on.
Next we'll have humanoid robots that occasionally decide to go on killing sprees, or explode. Or are so easy to hack remotely that owning one is essentially inviting every cybercriminal and spy agency into your home to follow you around and take notes.
️@ApostateEnglishman You ask about failed SpaceX launches: turns out Falcon 9 has launched 606 times with 603 mission successes. 3 launch failures total, none in the past 11 years. It's *ridiculously* reliable compared to any of its rivals.
(Falcon 1—discontinued—was a buggy prototype; Starship is trying to get past that.)
(Tesla is not going to give us humanoid robots, not beyond showroom rigged demos targeting the investors' wallets. And I'm NOT having one of those brain implants, no way!)
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
there is nothing more guaranteed for pygmy ponies on springs to be sold as anti-gravity unicorns with lasers than an IPO road show for tech....
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@jb I don't approve of capitalism occupying Earth orbit; my point was that (at least according to Manley, and what I do understand of physics and orbital mechanics) it's not implausible that what the Muskrat is doing here is actually sensible from a capitalist standpoint.
His whole existence is a grift, and he needs to be stopped, but this particular part of it seems far less of a con than (e.g.) the "cybertruck".
@woozle @jb Tough luck: all we've got in orbit today is capitalism, plus a couple of government-funded puppet shows showcasing "space science" while paying huge back-handers to corporations.
This is the reason we can't have nice things. (I prefer the term "crapitalism" to "enshittification", but you get the picture either way.)
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@ApostateEnglishman "None of the big ideas ever materialize" except the launcher with the payload of the space shuttle at $12M/flight that is *more reusable* than the shuttle ( 8 day turnaround between flights! 50 reuses per booster and climbing!) or disrupting the car industry by making EVs sexy. Or the low orbit comsat cluster.
Most of his bullshit evaporates on close inspection or goes wrong—but enough of it works to keep everything afloat.
(Shun anything he says about software, though.)
@cstross @ApostateEnglishman@mastodon.world
The innovation wasn't the cars.
It was implementing a transport _system_
Now once there is a system of a supply network for recharging, and vehicles to recharge, other people will do it, and eventually as commodities and better.The thing with Spacex wasn't launches and missions, it was a transport _system_.
Now, what is the complete system being floated?
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
@cstross that is what he does. He promises things, puts people he employs in a positon of trying to make it work, doesn't deliver, and the cycle starts again.
And some people chose to believe that *this time* it will be true.
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@FaithfullJohn Well yes, but we need to criticize it because it's bullshit: "rational and responsible use" have nothing to do with the stock market.
@cstross Indeed
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@woozle @jb Tough luck: all we've got in orbit today is capitalism, plus a couple of government-funded puppet shows showcasing "space science" while paying huge back-handers to corporations.
This is the reason we can't have nice things. (I prefer the term "crapitalism" to "enshittification", but you get the picture either way.)
@cstross Indeed, I know -- it's where we are now.
Perhaps not too late to stop it from metastasizing, but it's going to be a hard battle.
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Capitalism is a self-limiting problem.
(Whether it limits *us* at the same time is an open question for the time being.)
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@raymaccarthy @oldgeek @lucien The point of starlink is low latency, which means low orbit. Which in turn requires lots of them to ensure there are no gaps in coverage. (And now they're working on satellite-to-satellite high bandwidth laser mesh networking to increase capacity.)
I think you underestimate the scale of aviation and shipping, not to mention railway transport.
@cstross @oldgeek @lucien
No, I don't because I was RF R&D in an ISP with fibre, mobile, Fixed Wireless and Satellite. They also had datacentres.Railway is better served by Cellular.
Obviously in LEO you need a load to have continuous coverage, but to do the equivalent of rural fibre or cellular for trains you need orders of magnitude more.
Even cellular is being done badly due to too big cells and regulatory capture. I've dealt with the Irish regulator, Comreg.
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Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
Elon Musk very rarely actually builds what he promotes.
He is a traitorous money laundering conduit for petrostate despots.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/25/elon-musk-has-been-in-regular-contact-with-putin-for-two-years-say-reportshttps://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-jared-kushner-world-cup-2022-12
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/05/13/trump-tech-execs-riyadh/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/tech/saudi-arabia-us-chips-ai-raceEven his investors like Larry Ellison, Putin, & Alwaleed bin Talal recognize his utility in corrupting elections for the richest fascists on the planet.
Musk facilitates mass financial frauds.
That's it, that's all he does, defraud.
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