Is that a fake tweet? If not, what is he even talking about here? Starship, a cargo rocket, is going to be delivering… electricity… to orbit? And we have have to ship that electricity off the moon with a rail gun/mass driver?
Exactly how does elon think electricity works? Is he planning on shipping the electrons directly, or in a convenient chemical storage tank? And if the latter, does that mean hes just loading starship with extremely heavy low energy density batteries? And wtf does AI have to do with any of this?
The solution is simple. Nuclear. If you want to go sci-fi or are willing to wait about a hundred years, well start getting solar powered satellites that beam their energy through microwaves back down to Earth, or more likely to an orbiter that massively tones it down then sends it to mulitple power farms on the ground since you dint want a cosmic microwave death ray pointing directly at Earth.
Nuclear has very high up front costs. There are estimates that with reasonable transmission losses, putting solar satalites into orbit with Falcon 9 would already be cost competitive with nuclear. Starship should bring this down even more, perhaps even an order of magnitude. At which point there would be zero use case for new nuclear fission plants.
Now, this is comparing a hypothetical satellite system with actually built nuclear projects. That said, nuclear fission power is an economic dead end. Advocates have been so caught up in talking about the safety aspects (mostly talking points built in the 90s against Greenpeace and never changed) that they haven’t addressed the actual reason nobody wants to build them: they suck copious amounts of money in the build out and blow their construction schedule.
Ok upon rereading, im still utterly baffled by the AI part, but yes, mass producing satellites on the moon and shooting them into Earth orbit or a close sun orbit via a mass driver is pretty likely in the future. We WILL be making satellites that will form the basis of a dyson swarm, and its very unlikely we will make them on Earth as almost anywhere else in the solar system is going to be easier. The moon is an excellent starting point, but in the long term the moon is primarily just going to be a refueling station for deeper space trips. Most of our soace manufacturing and shipping is going to be primarily handled in the asteroid belt, and then in the much further future there will be more people living in the Keiper belt than has ever existed on Earth.
Edit: in case its not obvious, my passion is futurology, this is literally the shit i spend all day reading and researching about every single day. My passion used to be AI but since the creation of LLMs most of the itneresting research has been sidelined.
The issue is power transmission. Wireless transmission has repeatedly been shown to be highly energy intensive and prone to severe loss the further you’re sending it, plus you still have to have a way to pick it up and convert it to electricity at a useful rate on the ground.
Solar irradiance above the atmosphere (i.e., in orbit) is 1360 W/m^2. At ground level, it’s 1120, so a loss of ~18% due to the atmosphere.
If transmission losses plus the massive costs of launch, keeping the panels cool (no conduction/convection in space), and maintenance add up to greater than 18%, it’s more efficient on the ground.
I’m not so sure that the belt will be our manufacturing base, at least in the beginning. It’s awful far away, and the moon already has a lot of the base resources we need
Yeah def not in the beginning. Itll probably be moon->trojan asteroids-> skimming jupiter & asteroid belt ->outer planets & Keiper belt -> oort cloud
I dont know if humanity would ever get to where people are living and working in the oort cloud, even if you gave us infinite time to do so. I do like the thought of generational ships in deep space though.
Is that a fake tweet? If not, what is he even talking about here? Starship, a cargo rocket, is going to be delivering… electricity… to orbit? And we have have to ship that electricity off the moon with a rail gun/mass driver?
Exactly how does elon think electricity works? Is he planning on shipping the electrons directly, or in a convenient chemical storage tank? And if the latter, does that mean hes just loading starship with extremely heavy low energy density batteries? And wtf does AI have to do with any of this?
The solution is simple. Nuclear. If you want to go sci-fi or are willing to wait about a hundred years, well start getting solar powered satellites that beam their energy through microwaves back down to Earth, or more likely to an orbiter that massively tones it down then sends it to mulitple power farms on the ground since you dint want a cosmic microwave death ray pointing directly at Earth.
Nuclear has very high up front costs. There are estimates that with reasonable transmission losses, putting solar satalites into orbit with Falcon 9 would already be cost competitive with nuclear. Starship should bring this down even more, perhaps even an order of magnitude. At which point there would be zero use case for new nuclear fission plants.
Now, this is comparing a hypothetical satellite system with actually built nuclear projects. That said, nuclear fission power is an economic dead end. Advocates have been so caught up in talking about the safety aspects (mostly talking points built in the 90s against Greenpeace and never changed) that they haven’t addressed the actual reason nobody wants to build them: they suck copious amounts of money in the build out and blow their construction schedule.
Nuclear is cool, but I like the independence solar panels bring to individuals :)
True. We should we able to run our own personal reactors. I read a few wikipedia articles, I’m sure I could manage it.
Ok upon rereading, im still utterly baffled by the AI part, but yes, mass producing satellites on the moon and shooting them into Earth orbit or a close sun orbit via a mass driver is pretty likely in the future. We WILL be making satellites that will form the basis of a dyson swarm, and its very unlikely we will make them on Earth as almost anywhere else in the solar system is going to be easier. The moon is an excellent starting point, but in the long term the moon is primarily just going to be a refueling station for deeper space trips. Most of our soace manufacturing and shipping is going to be primarily handled in the asteroid belt, and then in the much further future there will be more people living in the Keiper belt than has ever existed on Earth.
Edit: in case its not obvious, my passion is futurology, this is literally the shit i spend all day reading and researching about every single day. My passion used to be AI but since the creation of LLMs most of the itneresting research has been sidelined.
The issue is power transmission. Wireless transmission has repeatedly been shown to be highly energy intensive and prone to severe loss the further you’re sending it, plus you still have to have a way to pick it up and convert it to electricity at a useful rate on the ground.
Solar irradiance above the atmosphere (i.e., in orbit) is 1360 W/m^2. At ground level, it’s 1120, so a loss of ~18% due to the atmosphere.
If transmission losses plus the massive costs of launch, keeping the panels cool (no conduction/convection in space), and maintenance add up to greater than 18%, it’s more efficient on the ground.
The basic practicality of a microwave-based system was demonstrated in 2023, and it does work. However, they are suspiciously mum about efficiency.
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/in-a-first-caltechs-space-solar-power-demonstrator-wirelessly-transmits-power-in-space
I’m not so sure that the belt will be our manufacturing base, at least in the beginning. It’s awful far away, and the moon already has a lot of the base resources we need
Yeah def not in the beginning. Itll probably be moon->trojan asteroids-> skimming jupiter & asteroid belt ->outer planets & Keiper belt -> oort cloud
I dont know if humanity would ever get to where people are living and working in the oort cloud, even if you gave us infinite time to do so. I do like the thought of generational ships in deep space though.