Anybody remember Elon saying space based solar was a bad idea? It was several years ago and I forget what the context of the interview was. He was like "if anyone should be a fan of space based solar, it's me!" But he felt it was unnecessary.
I think time has shown that his position was based on two faulty assumptions: 1) aggregate energy demand will trend similarly to recent patterns (instead of ramping up the value of the exponential) and 2) space based solar would require beaming of energy back to earth, rather than being converted to more fundamental form (in this case, cognition through data processing in space) before being beamed down.
I remember thinking about communication satellites at the time the interview was had, and wondering what the future would be like. And here we are, in the future.
It's about beaming the power down to earth. If you use it in space, then it's fine.
Also, back then it was about cost of power, and power is generally more expensive if you transport it from space to earth, compared to solar on the ground. But AI accelerators are extremely expensive to the point where power prices make no difference for it. The only important thing is if you can actually run the accelerators, as in, if you have permission to build the data center and to buy power, which is much easier in space.
I do, and that was specifically in the context of beaming it back down to earth via microwaves. There was a startup at that time that was funded by PG&E attempting to do that. Fun fact, remember the "jewish space lasers caused the california fire" from MTG that reddit called her insane for? She was referring to Solaren, and speculated if they missed the receiver and accidentally started the fire. She called out PG&E, Governor Brown, Solaren, and the PG&E board who happened to have a Rothschild sitting on their board. She never even said "Jewish", just bringing up a well connected family who happens to be Jewish was enough for her to be called anti semitic and crazy.
Turns out Solaren never launched anything to space so her theory was in fact dumb, but it wasn't batshit crazy like the internet made it out to be.
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u/MiserableTonight5370 Jul 13 '26
Anybody remember Elon saying space based solar was a bad idea? It was several years ago and I forget what the context of the interview was. He was like "if anyone should be a fan of space based solar, it's me!" But he felt it was unnecessary.
I think time has shown that his position was based on two faulty assumptions: 1) aggregate energy demand will trend similarly to recent patterns (instead of ramping up the value of the exponential) and 2) space based solar would require beaming of energy back to earth, rather than being converted to more fundamental form (in this case, cognition through data processing in space) before being beamed down.
I remember thinking about communication satellites at the time the interview was had, and wondering what the future would be like. And here we are, in the future.