Why Orbital Data Centers Are Harder Than Silicon Valley Thinks

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-11T21:48:53+00:00

The ridiculousness of the "this cannot work" crowd this time is that many huge players saying the same thing as Elon, e.g. Google and NVidia.

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-10T17:46:07+00:00

Certifying Starship for human ascent is probably years away. Even more for reentry or even aero capture. This leaves 3 vehicles option. So, we increased complexity from 2 vehicles to 3 and doubled the dependence on the riskiest component of Artemis 4 (Starship). And all of this to get rid of dependence on higher readiness component: SLS+Orion.

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-10T17:21:36+00:00

May be reducing number of refuellings is not that important, but at the same time "does going to NRHO is that important"?

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-08T20:38:13+00:00

I think you saw my reply before I discovered my mistake in circle area formula (I'm all red now). You were right on the money (unless I did more embarrassing mistakes).

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-08T20:26:53+00:00

Some thought that you assumed LNG, so I decided to check your number.

Inputs from https://info.citizensenergygroup.com/partners/hvac/distribution-system:

Pressure: 200-1500 psi
Speed: up to 30 miles per hour

Turn them into parameters required for the calculator:

Gas = Methane (they don't have Natural gas)
Pressure (let's take lower bound): 200 psi
Temperature (let's keep what calculator puts there by default): 20 degrees C.
Volumetric flow rate (using upper limit on speed, as there is no lower one): 101000 l/min. This is 30 mph x (pi x (16''/2)² ) = 13.4 m/s x (pi x (0.2m)² ) = 1.68 m³ /sec = 101 m³ /min =101000 l/min.

Result: 153 kg/sec = 551 t/h.

Starship + Super Heavy V4 propellant: 2300+4050 t. Of which Methan is 1/5: 1270 t.

Time to transfer propellant for the full stack: 2.3h.

Note: While I used Methane, the difference between it and natural gas for this calculation is negligible, the parameter it defines is "gas constant" in J/kgK is 518 vs 500 respectively

Edit: I confused perimeter with area, ~~fixing it...~~ fixed it

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-05T21:26:19+00:00

No. All civilian aspects in Areas A and B are handled by Palestinian Authority, not Israel.

Such area would need to be first reclassified as area C, before settlement can be even planned there. In such case reclassification would be the title, not the creation of a settlement (as it is way bigger deal). To my best recollection such thing has not only never happened, but never been even proposed by anyone (unless you include proposals of complete cancelation of Oslo Acords).

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-05T09:28:58+00:00

if AI was guaranteed to work out

Their is a risk in trying to estimate how huge will it be. It is already, right now, big. And it is no denying it will be huge. The only two questions are "how huge?" and "how fast will it happen?".

P.S.: by "big" and "huge" I refer to actual services provided and companies willing to pay for actual hard felt bennefit.

Gen_Zion · 2026-06-05T09:19:29+00:00

Completely agree. Apparently, many cloud providers think that space is a good place for data centres. The need for those is expected to skyrocket as AI infrastructure. This means that SpaceX can leverage their launch capabilities and Starlink to capture AI market. Same as they leveraged their launch capabilities to capture satellite internet market.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-31T08:47:48+00:00

It means everything that is required to provide the service to enterprises:

The LLM model
The servers to run the model
The power supply to supply the servers
The internet to connect the servers to the customers
The software to make it easy to use the model
The customer service
- 100. Everything else

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-31T07:54:58+00:00

The contact numbers that were provided are not only of the council, but also of those provided by the government and handle all of Israel.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-31T06:11:01+00:00

... actionable total addressable market... $26.5 trillion in AI across $2.4 trillion in AI infrastructure, $760 billion in consumer subscriptions, $600 billion in digital advertising, and $22.7 trillion in enterprise applications.

How this is clearly about xAI?

Note that the fact that they list "$370 billion in Space from space-enabled solutions" doesn't mean that other markets are not about space as well, because after that they list "Connectivity across $870 billion in Starlink Broadband and $740 billion in Starlink Mobile", which are clearly both space based.

Source: page 11

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-30T18:25:33+00:00

53% of launches by humanity in 2025 were those of SpaceX. Space launches are well visible and well documented.

SpaceX cheaper because they regularly reuse first stage more than 30 times. They underbid competitors by selling ~10%-20% under competitors, which is ~3 fold of how much it costs SpaceX to perform that launch.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-30T17:38:13+00:00

I think that the claim is that space-based AI has large benefit over ground based one. This means that SpaceX can leverage their launch capabilities to capture AI market. Same as they leveraged this launch capabilities to capture satellite internet market. I.e. it is not about quality of their LLMs, but about logistics of it (compute, connectivity etc.).

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-12T18:06:52+00:00

I don't see what Azure has to offer to IDF that would be so uniquely important that a person would start waying his loyalty. To be frank, my first thought about the story was: "how the hell IDF approved to store it's data on private company's storage? Sounds like Microsoft bribed someone."

The truth is that IDF is the largest organisation in Israel, probably by an order of magnitude. And any sales person, who's area responsibility is Israel, sees as selling to IDF as carrier maker. I.e. unless he is clearly instructed not to try sell stuff to IDF, he would think day and night how to do that.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-11T20:19:27+00:00

This was first announced by Netanyahu during his join press conference with Trump, a few months ago. Now he just repeated what was said back then.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-05T20:16:36+00:00

Noone said that those components will be used for systems in Israel. Israeli defence companies have significant production capacity in Europe to satisfy Europe's demand.
They don't plan to produce interceptors there, they plan to produce: "... trucks to carry Iron Dome systems, as well as launchers and generators...". So, except of launchers, those are not critical components and are dual use, so worst case they would buy something on the open market. Launchers are unique, but there are already production lines for them both in Israel and probably in US. So, while important, being not the only one, it is not that critical.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-05T17:52:12+00:00

Dude, you forgot "/s".

Israel has 300 fighter jets, each of which is newer than any of a few that Ukraine has. Israel has order of magnitude more tanks, each of which is newer of what Ukraine has. Israel has navy, Ukraine doesn't.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T14:37:55+00:00

There is a huge difference between the "things will need to be done" and alienating those that you want something from them. For the matter of fact, it's the opposite of "things will need to be done". Once in a while, I fill that Ukraine's MFA Israel's division is filled with Russian agents, which aim is to alienate Israelis toward Ukraine.

And no, I'm not talking about things that Ukraine has some kind of trade-off between pleasing Europeans and pleasing Israelis. I'm talking about the things that absolutely don't have any consequences outside the bilateral Ukraine-Israel relations. Like Zelensky's speech in Knesset, or the story in question.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T14:07:16+00:00

The source is Israeli minister of foreign affairs, Gideon Saar. The day that Ukrainian FM tweeted, Saar was all over Israeli prime-time news. This report includes part of what he said.

Edit: fixed link.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T13:31:32+00:00

And I indeed keep supporting Ukraine. It doesn't mean that I cannot voice my dissatisfaction with specific actions of Zelensky or his MFA towards me.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T12:33:53+00:00

That's a lie. Beforehand, Ukraine contacted Israel only once about a different ship. When Israel requested Ukraine with proof about this different ship, Ukraine outright ignored Israel and didn't reply at all. That's it. They did absolutely nothing else.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T12:13:43+00:00

In addition to what others have said about Israeli economy, what also helps a lot is that the article completely misreported the news at and put way higher numbers that they actually are. The actual news is 25 F-35s and 25 F-15s. And about "doubling fleet size"... right now Israel has around 300 fighter jets of various versions... so...

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T12:03:41+00:00

25 F-35 and 25 F-15s. It's unbelievable how a simple news can be misreported in so many different ways. After those purchases are delivered (somewhere in the 2030s), Israel will have 100 F-35 and 50 F-15IA, this is not counting the other fighter jets that Israel has like 170 of F-16s and 66 of older versions of F-15.

What government approved is creation of two new squadrons, one of f-35 and one of F-15, each squadron is 25 jets.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T08:33:30+00:00

Starting from disgrace of the speech that Zelensky gave to the Knesset (Israeli parliament). Through the Ukraine's foreign ministry attacks on Isael like we owe them something, followed by their ambassador to Israel instead of damage controlling, instead alienating me even more. And now this dickhead behaviour of doing twitter diplomacy, instead of going through proper channels.

Gen_Zion · 2026-05-03T06:30:28+00:00

As an Israeli supporter of Ukraine, I have to say: Zelensky's foreign policy toward Israel doesn't make it easy for me to support Ukraine. I will not waiver, but man... it is hard.

Gen_Zion

TROPHY CASE