[javascriptfan69]

Current cost to LEO is $1500 per kg

That would make your solar panel (40kg) around $60K to put into space.

Even being generous and assuming you could get it to $100 per kg that's still $4000

There's a lot of land in the middle of nowhere that is going to be cheaper than sending shit to space.

[trhway]

>That would make your solar panel (40kg) around $60K to put into space.

with the GPU costing the same, it would only double the capex.

>Even being generous and assuming you could get it to $100 per kg that's still $4000

noise compare to the main cost - GPUs.

>There's a lot of land in the middle of nowhere that is going to be cheaper than sending shit to space.

Cheapness of location of your major investment - GPUs - may as well happen to be secondary to other considerations - power/cooling capacity stable availability, jurisdiction, etc.

[estomagordo]

> with the GPU costing the same, it would only double the capex.

Yes, only doubling the capex. With the benefits of, hmm, no maintenance access and awful networking?

[iso1631]

> jurisdiction

This is the big thing, but Elon's child porn generator in orbit will be subject to US jurisdiction, just as much as if they were in Alaska. I guess he can avoid state law.

If jurisdiction is key, you can float a DC in international waters on a barge flying the flag of Panama or similar flag of convenience which you can pretty much buy at this scale. Pick a tin-pot country, fling a few million to the dictator, and you're set - with far less jurisdiction problems than a US, Russia, France launched satellite.

[blackoil]

Any idea, what is the estimated cost of a Google TPU. It may not make sense for Nvidia retail price but at cost price of Google.

[ericd]

I think the disconnect is that with starship they’re targeting >200 tons/200,000 kg and $2m-$10m/launch, so the very optimistic case is more like $10/kg. Also, the production of a panel in sun sync orbit is many times one on the ground, doesn’t suffer seasonality/weather, and doesn’t require battery storage for smoothing/time shifting, so you’d need to deploy many times the number of panels on earth. Our home array in North America over the course of the year generates something like 1/7th of its theoretical capacity, overproduces in the summer, and underproduces in the winter.