"It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days."
He’s stupid, but in this instance I think he’s just bullshitting for spacex’s sake. Even he is capable of putting together the fact that the costs required to build (not to mention service) an orbital data center far outweigh the costs of swapping out the genset for the same exact solar panels you would have otherwise put on the rocket. Maybe you need more panels to make up for atmospheric transmission and the day/night cycle but he (or let’s be real, grok) has ready access to the cost of a single starship launch and a calculator.
He’s stupid, but in this instance I think he’s just bullshitting for spacex’s sake. Even he is capable of putting together the fact that the costs required to build (not to mention service) an orbital data center far outweigh the costs of swapping out the genset for the same exact solar panels you would have otherwise put on the rocket. Maybe you need more panels to make up for atmospheric transmission and the day/night cycle but he (or let’s be real, grok) has ready access to the cost of a single starship launch and a calculator.