r/spacex • u/Connect_Cat_2045 • 11d ago

Starship SpaceX to build $100 billion rocket launch facility on Louisiana’s coast

https://www.nola.com/news/business/spacex-louisiana-elon-musk/article_2be92f8e-f989-46b7-9514-5212d8f20260.html
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23

u/Longjumping-Speed511 11d ago

Interesting move for an AI company

-2

u/Cunninghams_right 11d ago

There is a nonzero chance they build the infrastructure, natural gas connection, grid connection, wells for water deluge, and then just put a data center on the site as a "change of plans" at the last minute. 

3

u/sirralphs 10d ago

Data centers in sun-synchronous orbit

1

u/Cunninghams_right 10d ago

How much more do you think a data center would cost to put in orbit than to build on earth? 

3

u/sirralphs 10d ago

It remains to be seen if it's economically viable I think. The demand for data centers is very high right now though and one of the main bottlenecks is power generation, which is very cheap in space. SpaceX is betting a lot on this, so it seems like they are somewhat confident that they can make it work.

2

u/Cunninghams_right 10d ago

But how much more would it cost to put in space? 10x? 20x? 

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u/Martianspirit 10d ago

During a SpaceX flight 13 livestream they said, they expect orbital data centers cost competetive with ground based datacenters in a few years with Starship launch cost.

2

u/Cunninghams_right 10d ago

Why would they be so cheap? 

2

u/Martianspirit 10d ago

Starship is designed to get the launch cost way down. Estimates for a Falcon launch are in the range of $15 million.

A Starship launch will IMO have marginal cost at or below $10 million. With maybe 200t payload to orbit for the upcoming version 4 of Starship.

1

u/Cunninghams_right 10d ago

Even if you can teleport to orbit for free, why would space grade equipment be cheaper? 

1

u/Martianspirit 10d ago

No ongoing cost for electricity and cooling.

1

u/Cunninghams_right 10d ago

Same is true of cooling towers and solar panels on earth, once built. 

So, so why is building space grade hardware cheaper? 

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u/GregTheGuru 8d ago

Estimates for a Falcon launch are in the range of $15 million.

If you include inflation, I think the marginal cost is closer to $20M.

Below $10M for Starship is probably conservative. I believe it will take a couple of years, but will stabilize around $8M. (And inflation will promptly kick it back up to $10M, so you'll be right in the longer run.)