Author Topic: SpaceX vs Blue Origin - Whose Approach / Business Strategy is Better? Thread 1  (Read 565735 times)

Offline envy887

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What we may need from space is more raw minerals like aluminum, iron, titanium, cobalt, copper, zinc, lead, etc.

We are not in short supply of any of those on Earth. Aluminum is 8% of the Earth's crust, iron is the most abundant, titanium is the 9th most abundant...

There is likely no market on Earth for raw material from space. Not unless the price was close to zero, which means no one is making money in space mining raw material.

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Many of these minerals may have to be mined on the moon, Mars, or the asteroids to keep up with depletion of earths mineral resources.

Again, we're not on a path to mineral depletion here on Earth. Even "rare-earth elements" are not rare, just hard to extract.

No, the predominant market for raw material mined in space will be for consumption IN space, and it will be used for building the equipment and dwellings we'll need to expand humanity out into space, since it's too expensive to ship all that mass up from the surface of Earth.

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Once mined, they may be smelted and processed into finished goods in O'Neil cylinders or on the moon or Mars.

From what I've read about the processing of raw material here on Earth, you won't want to do it in a human-habitable structure due to all the poisonous chemicals that are used when processing ore here on Earth.

However space has some advantages that could be used to develop new ways to process ore in space, such as zero gravity and a constant source of heat (and cold). First we need a source of raw material though...

Depending where you get it, the metals might not be in ores but in metallic state.

Offline meekGee

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A major difference is that a Mars colony grows organically. The demand to manufacture steel is only what the colony needs, enough for 1000, 10,000 people, and growing slowly.

In Bezos's plan, you're trying to compete with an existing terrestrial industrial base and supply 10 Billion people.  If the idea is to artificially support this industrial complex until it becomes competitive, that's OOMs more money than Bezos has.

Someone above mentioned "sources of cold". Industry relies on having heat sinks, and the only place where you have industrial level heat sinks in cis-lunar space is cryogenic lunar craters.

That's not a cheap way to make anything.

It's a sci-fi level goal without a reasonable path to achieving it.

The SpaceX plan OTOH is not just a goal, it's an effort that can start and make sense starting in the present.

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« Last Edit: 06/17/2018 02:41 pm by meekGee »
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Offline johnfwhitesell

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Meanwhile what exactly is the plan to build in LEO or on the moon? Factories that do what?

-Make rocket fuel on the moon
-Make structural elements on the moon
-Produce solar panels or mine materials in space

Right. So two things:

Technically, to reduce this to practice, what's the path?  You need ISRU, right?  Non-existent in orbit, and cryogenic, maybe, sparsely, in craters on the lunar pole.

Mine material in space?  What material?

Financially, who'll buy the product?  I mean if the goal is to make money, and the people as you say are on Earth, who wants structural elements that are made on the moon?


It's sequential.  First you use lunar fuel to take satellites from LEO to GEO, saving mass.  Then you start to replace the mass of satellites with extraterrestrial materials.  Then they get more advanced until you can do things like space solar power.  ULA seems to think there is promise in microwave power transmission. 

My personal opinion is that orbital datacenters are a much more promising then transmitting power to earth.  Datacenters are already consuming hundreds of terrawatts of electricity a year and that's expected to grow drastically.  If orbital datacenters were buying 3 PWh of electricity at 1 cent/kWh that would be a 30 billion dollar electricity market in orbit.  That is the kind of market that could get a moon colony going.

Offline meekGee

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Meanwhile what exactly is the plan to build in LEO or on the moon? Factories that do what?

-Make rocket fuel on the moon
-Make structural elements on the moon
-Produce solar panels or mine materials in space

Right. So two things:

Technically, to reduce this to practice, what's the path?  You need ISRU, right?  Non-existent in orbit, and cryogenic, maybe, sparsely, in craters on the lunar pole.

Mine material in space?  What material?

Financially, who'll buy the product?  I mean if the goal is to make money, and the people as you say are on Earth, who wants structural elements that are made on the moon?


It's sequential.  First you use lunar fuel to take satellites from LEO to GEO, saving mass.  Then you start to replace the mass of satellites with extraterrestrial materials.  Then they get more advanced until you can do things like space solar power.  ULA seems to think there is promise in microwave power transmission. 

My personal opinion is that orbital datacenters are a much more promising then transmitting power to earth.  Datacenters are already consuming hundreds of terrawatts of electricity a year and that's expected to grow drastically.  If orbital datacenters were buying 3 PWh of electricity at 1 cent/kWh that would be a 30 billion dollar electricity market in orbit.  That is the kind of market that could get a moon colony going.

How would the data centers reject GWatts of low-temperature waste heat?

For kicks, if you had a prefect radiator, and were rejecting heat at 100C, you'd need 1000 m2 for a single lonely MWatt.  (Space Station radiators are 6.5 m2 each)  (This would mean you'd be running your electronics at >>100C, which is inefficient, per GFlop)

If you wanted to keep your electronics near room temperature, you'd need at least double if not triple that area.

A large data center uses >100 MWatt.

Also, data centers are labor intensive.  Equipment is continuously maintained, replaced, upgraded.  On Earth, supporting the workforce is "free".  In orbit, you'd either need a manned data-center/space-station, or you'd need to come up with a data center that operates robotically, and this includes replacing broken bus connections, broken cooling connections, broken robotic manipulators, all the way down to the mechanical infrastructure.  It is crazy complicated.

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There isn't any proposal I've seen yet about what to do in near-earth space that would make a dent on Earth industrial markets.

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Offline speedevil

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It's sequential.  First you use lunar fuel to take satellites from LEO to GEO, saving mass.  Then you start to replace the mass of satellites with extraterrestrial materials.  Then they get more advanced until you can do things like space solar power.  ULA seems to think there is promise in microwave power transmission. 
You're going to need to break down your assumptions.
One ton of fuel in LEO may cost $10K (if you believe P2P), $300K if you assume $50M per BFR launch.

Given that this is a small cost for even 50 tons of fuel for all current GEO satellites, and given that the actual incremental cost may be close to $0, where is your funding coming for making this lunar fuel?
Lunar fuel is also annoyingly far away from LEO - something like 2.5km/s if you're able to do aerocapture, 6km/s if you're not.

(Above numbers are broadly similar for new armstrong)

I'm not saying ISRU is a bad plan, but if you're planning on developing a billion dollar ISRU plant, that buys a _lot_ of fuel.

Offline johnfwhitesell

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For kicks, if you had a prefect radiator, and were rejecting heat at 100C, you'd need 1000 m2 for a single lonely MWatt. 

In order to generation that MW of heat you would need 1 MW of electrical generation.  With a solar panel efficiency of 25% and a solar flux of 1.3 kW per m^2 that requires 3000 square meters of solar array.  The arrays only receive light on one side so it would make sense to pick a material with a high emissivity for the other side.  IIRC emissivity is equivalent to light absorption so it would make sense to make the solar panels have emissivity as close to the absorption efficiency as possible.  So let's say 95% on the radiation side, 30% on the solar panel side.  So that is 1.2 MW of heat to ditch (200 kW is the radiation heat on the panels) emitted through 6000 square meters with an average emissivity of 67%.  Based on those assumptions, the equilibrium temperature would be 270 Kelvin, just shy of freezing.  This is ignoring the effects of earth shadow which would require a larger array and thus lower the equilibrium temperature.  This is also ignoring the heat distribution problem, which would likely be the much more difficult challenge.

Offline meekGee

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For kicks, if you had a prefect radiator, and were rejecting heat at 100C, you'd need 1000 m2 for a single lonely MWatt. 

In order to generation that MW of heat you would need 1 MW of electrical generation.  With a solar panel efficiency of 25% and a solar flux of 1.3 kW per m^2 that requires 3000 square meters of solar array.  The arrays only receive light on one side so it would make sense to pick a material with a high emissivity for the other side.  IIRC emissivity is equivalent to light absorption so it would make sense to make the solar panels have emissivity as close to the absorption efficiency as possible.  So let's say 95% on the radiation side, 30% on the solar panel side.  So that is 1.2 MW of heat to ditch (200 kW is the radiation heat on the panels) emitted through 6000 square meters with an average emissivity of 67%.  Based on those assumptions, the equilibrium temperature would be 270 Kelvin, just shy of freezing.  This is ignoring the effects of earth shadow which would require a larger array and thus lower the equilibrium temperature.  This is also ignoring the heat distribution problem, which would likely be the much more difficult challenge.
Not so fast...  When your array is that big, its easy (relatively) to conduct electricity inwards...  But much harder to pump heat outwards.

At the end of the day, everything is possible, but complexity and scale makes it expensive.



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Offline johnfwhitesell

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You're going to need to break down your assumptions.
One ton of fuel in LEO may cost $10K (if you believe P2P), $300K if you assume $50M per BFR launch.

They aren't my assumptions.  The question was asked what their plan was.  I explained what their plan was.  Their plan is based around the belief that $500/kg will be a competitive price for fuel in LEO.

I am hopeful that the price for fuel in LEO will be lower then $500/kg.  I am optimistic that the usefulness of lunar fuel wont be in LEO to GEO but in orbits much closer to the moon, such as earth-moon transfer to lunar surface and back.  I think it's inevitable that the next generation rockets will lead to a return to the moon to stay with the government as a customer.  That's what my assumptions are.

However I dont think your numbers are logically sound.  Mass to orbit and fuel to orbit aren't the same thing.  You need a vessel to store the liquid hydrogen and transfer it to where it's going to be used.  While this is certainly technically feasible, technically feasible is not the same thing as saying something will happen.  The BFS SSTO is feasible but it will never happen.  We know this because they aren't working on it and have expressed no interest in working on it.  The BFS as a hydrolox fuel transport is not as far fetched as the BFS SSTO because there is possibly a market for it (ULA's president has expressed openness to the idea) but there are still no plans in motion to make such hardware.  Afterall, why would they be making such hardware when it's only use is for a space tug and there aren't any space tugs being built yet?

Offline johnfwhitesell

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Not so fast...  When your array is that big, its easy (relatively) to conduct electricity inwards...  But much harder to pump heat outwards.

It feels like you are playing "gotcha!" here after I just finished saying that I thought that was the more significant problem.  To repeat myself, I think the heat distribution is the more significant concern.  The reason I talked about the heat exchange was because that was what you were talking about.

In regards to the distribution, I am even less fluent in thermal conduction then in radiation so it's more difficult for me to say.  However I will note again that I think datacenters would be in LEO, where they would need considerably larger arrays for the necessary power due to the shadow.  This means that the equilibrium temperature for the radiation would be even lower.  This would allow for an even larger gradient of temperature between a computer chip kept at temperatures above 0 Celsius and the radiator panels.  It seems to me that if there is a temperature gradient of around 30 degrees or so, it should be possible to design the system to achieve the task with passive thermal conduction.  It may even be possible to take advantage of the heat gradient for a small amount of energy reclamation.  If you are apt with thermal conduction calculations and would like to explain things better I would welcome the insight.  But if it's just a gut thing, 100 meters of distance with a 30 degree difference or so seems pretty reasonable to me.  Maybe the centers would be hotter then earth, maybe colder, but it feels like it would be in the ballpark of earth.

Offline meekGee

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Not so fast...  When your array is that big, its easy (relatively) to conduct electricity inwards...  But much harder to pump heat outwards.

It feels like you are playing "gotcha!" here after I just finished saying that I thought that was the more significant problem.  To repeat myself, I think the heat distribution is the more significant concern.  The reason I talked about the heat exchange was because that was what you were talking about.

In regards to the distribution, I am even less fluent in thermal conduction then in radiation so it's more difficult for me to say.  However I will note again that I think datacenters would be in LEO, where they would need considerably larger arrays for the necessary power due to the shadow.  This means that the equilibrium temperature for the radiation would be even lower.  This would allow for an even larger gradient of temperature between a computer chip kept at temperatures above 0 Celsius and the radiator panels.  It seems to me that if there is a temperature gradient of around 30 degrees or so, it should be possible to design the system to achieve the task with passive thermal conduction.  It may even be possible to take advantage of the heat gradient for a small amount of energy reclamation.  If you are apt with thermal conduction calculations and would like to explain things better I would welcome the insight.  But if it's just a gut thing, 100 meters of distance with a 30 degree difference or so seems pretty reasonable to me.  Maybe the centers would be hotter then earth, maybe colder, but it feels like it would be in the ballpark of earth.

My bad....  Reading too fast on the phone.  Leaving orig intact as a lesson to my future self.  :)
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Offline johnfwhitesell

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My bad....  Reading too fast on the phone.  Leaving orig intact as a lesson to my future self.  :)

Okay, thanks.  I was starting to feel a bit paranoid there.

Offline envy887

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Not so fast...  When your array is that big, its easy (relatively) to conduct electricity inwards...  But much harder to pump heat outwards.

It feels like you are playing "gotcha!" here after I just finished saying that I thought that was the more significant problem.  To repeat myself, I think the heat distribution is the more significant concern.  The reason I talked about the heat exchange was because that was what you were talking about.

In regards to the distribution, I am even less fluent in thermal conduction then in radiation so it's more difficult for me to say.  However I will note again that I think datacenters would be in LEO, where they would need considerably larger arrays for the necessary power due to the shadow.  This means that the equilibrium temperature for the radiation would be even lower.  This would allow for an even larger gradient of temperature between a computer chip kept at temperatures above 0 Celsius and the radiator panels.  It seems to me that if there is a temperature gradient of around 30 degrees or so, it should be possible to design the system to achieve the task with passive thermal conduction.  It may even be possible to take advantage of the heat gradient for a small amount of energy reclamation.  If you are apt with thermal conduction calculations and would like to explain things better I would welcome the insight.  But if it's just a gut thing, 100 meters of distance with a 30 degree difference or so seems pretty reasonable to me.  Maybe the centers would be hotter then earth, maybe colder, but it feels like it would be in the ballpark of earth.

A copper conductor to move 1 MW of power 100 meters under 30 dT will need 0.833 m^2 area and mass 749,700 kg.

Even flowing water is 100x less area and 1000x less mass than copper conductors, so a pumped water system would be more like 1000 kg, plus the mass of the pump.

And in microgravity it's possible to build phase change heat transfer systems that are far better than passive conduction or water flow, both per area and per mass. I'm not sure exactly how much better, but IIRC it's in the 1,000s to 10,000s of times, which would put a 1 MW system in the 100s of kg. Both phase change and water flow mean messing with fluids though, which could be a pain.

Offline meekGee

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The ISS has one.  Lightweight, it is not.  Here's why.

You calculate above the theoretical weight of a linear system, or rather estimate it by using "1000x lighter" type multipliers.

Even if that calculation was true, you have to distribute heat over an area.  The lateral conductivity of thin films is very low. So you need to drag your heat distribution tubing all over the place to cover almost literally every square inch (or, use a thicker and conductive material for the radiator).

Either way, a problem.  If you have thin tubing, pumping requires higher pressurres. MMOD becomes an issue.

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This is getting too technical and OT.

The root cause is that you need to build terrestrial-scale infrastructure, and there isn't a way to make that happen gradually and organically - not even with a Trillion dollars.

Industry needs to grow while being profitable. That's what differentiates a business plan from a lofty goal.

I would love for Bezos to show his plan. There is no reason to keep it a secret, as SpaceX has shown. I suspect however that there isn't one.

He'll go for tourism if that proves profitable, and maybe the aforementioned oneWeb play once New Glen flies.
Not so fast...  When your array is that big, its easy (relatively) to conduct electricity inwards...  But much harder to pump heat outwards.

It feels like you are playing "gotcha!" here after I just finished saying that I thought that was the more significant problem.  To repeat myself, I think the heat distribution is the more significant concern.  The reason I talked about the heat exchange was because that was what you were talking about.

In regards to the distribution, I am even less fluent in thermal conduction then in radiation so it's more difficult for me to say.  However I will note again that I think datacenters would be in LEO, where they would need considerably larger arrays for the necessary power due to the shadow.  This means that the equilibrium temperature for the radiation would be even lower.  This would allow for an even larger gradient of temperature between a computer chip kept at temperatures above 0 Celsius and the radiator panels.  It seems to me that if there is a temperature gradient of around 30 degrees or so, it should be possible to design the system to achieve the task with passive thermal conduction.  It may even be possible to take advantage of the heat gradient for a small amount of energy reclamation.  If you are apt with thermal conduction calculations and would like to explain things better I would welcome the insight.  But if it's just a gut thing, 100 meters of distance with a 30 degree difference or so seems pretty reasonable to me.  Maybe the centers would be hotter then earth, maybe colder, but it feels like it would be in the ballpark of earth.

A copper conductor to move 1 MW of power 100 meters under 30 dT will need 0.833 m^2 area and mass 749,700 kg.

Even flowing water is 100x less area and 1000x less mass than copper conductors, so a pumped water system would be more like 1000 kg, plus the mass of the pump.

And in microgravity it's possible to build phase change heat transfer systems that are far better than passive conduction or water flow, both per area and per mass. I'm not sure exactly how much better, but IIRC it's in the 1,000s to 10,000s of times, which would put a 1 MW system in the 100s of kg. Both phase change and water flow mean messing with fluids though, which could be a pain.

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Offline envy887

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The ISS has one.  Lightweight, it is not.  Here's why.

You calculate above the theoretical weight of a linear system, or rather estimate it by using "1000x lighter" type multipliers.

Even if that calculation was true, you have to distribute heat over an area.  The lateral conductivity of thin films is very low. So you need to drag your heat distribution tubing all over the place to cover almost literally every square inch (or, use a thicker and conductive material for the radiator).

Either way, a problem.  If you have thin tubing, pumping requires higher pressurres. MMOD becomes an issue.



The ISS radiator systems have a deployed full system areal density of 8.8 kg/m^2, so a 1000 m^2 MW class array would be 8800 kg, which is not entirely impractical.

Quote

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This is getting too technical and OT.

The root cause is that you need to build terrestrial-scale infrastructure, and there isn't a way to make that happen gradually and organically - not even with a Trillion dollars.

Industry needs to grow while being profitable. That's what differentiates a business plan from a lofty goal.

I would love for Bezos to show his plan. There is no reason to keep it a secret, as SpaceX has shown. I suspect however that there isn't one.

He'll go for tourism if that proves profitable, and maybe the aforementioned oneWeb play once New Glen flies.

Agreed. I don't see a killer app for industry in LEO or cislunar space, yet.

But I think tourism and comms can lay the infrastructure foundations, and then perhaps industry will follow.

Offline meekGee

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The ISS has one.  Lightweight, it is not.  Here's why.

You calculate above the theoretical weight of a linear system, or rather estimate it by using "1000x lighter" type multipliers.

Even if that calculation was true, you have to distribute heat over an area.  The lateral conductivity of thin films is very low. So you need to drag your heat distribution tubing all over the place to cover almost literally every square inch (or, use a thicker and conductive material for the radiator).

Either way, a problem.  If you have thin tubing, pumping requires higher pressurres. MMOD becomes an issue.



The ISS radiator systems have a deployed full system areal density of 8.8 kg/m^2, so a 1000 m^2 MW class array would be 8800 kg, which is not entirely impractical.

Quote

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This is getting too technical and OT.

The root cause is that you need to build terrestrial-scale infrastructure, and there isn't a way to make that happen gradually and organically - not even with a Trillion dollars.

Industry needs to grow while being profitable. That's what differentiates a business plan from a lofty goal.

I would love for Bezos to show his plan. There is no reason to keep it a secret, as SpaceX has shown. I suspect however that there isn't one.

He'll go for tourism if that proves profitable, and maybe the aforementioned oneWeb play once New Glen flies.

Agreed. I don't see a killer app for industry in LEO or cislunar space, yet.

But I think tourism and comms can lay the infrastructure foundations, and then perhaps industry will follow.
Fair enough.

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Offline johnfwhitesell

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This is getting too technical and OT.

The root cause is that you need to build terrestrial-scale infrastructure, and there isn't a way to make that happen gradually and organically - not even with a Trillion dollars.

The organic growth would be satellite internet.  Even if no more then a tiny percentage of the internet is using ISPs that route to LEO satellites, that's plenty of infrastructure for orbital datacenters.  To a limited extent, we already have satellite ISPs because of planes and ships, that just needs to grow bigger.

Offline intrepidpursuit

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Orbital data centers are something that I think will happen very quickly after orbital internet becomes a reality. Putting data within the distribution structure is done regularly in terrestrial systems. In orbit you have free power and you cut your latency in half. They will need radiators, but if the whole thing is built to be liquid cooled then that is a pretty simple problem. They would be very expensive and service would be a problem, but as last mile buffer systems I think the economics work out.

Neither party has even mentioned these, but they seem like a potential booming industry in LEO. And one that likely will be cheaper to service and upgrade than to replace. I'm looking forward to watching that shake out.

Offline johnfwhitesell

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Neither party has even mentioned these, but they seem like a potential booming industry in LEO. And one that likely will be cheaper to service and upgrade than to replace. I'm looking forward to watching that shake out.

.  If it costs 200 million to replace a satellite but 100 million to buy newer more efficient server hardware, it saves 100 million to send up an astronaut up there to do maintenance.  And if you can launch a spaceship that can spend a month visiting 10 satellites and upgrading them, that spaceship is saving a billion bucks per mission.  Even at space shuttle prices that would be a viable industry.  The space shuttle just existed before there was nearly enough demand for data to justify putting that much expensive hardware in space.  It's been observed that if the space shuttle had turned lead into gold by taking it to LEO that still would have been too expensive.  But magnetic tapes and silicon wafers are worth a lot more then gold by the ounce.  And if it's worthwhile to be sending manned spacecraft up there, pretty quickly it's viable to start putting space stations up there to act as service depots and living space for the crews.

Offline octavo

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Neither party has even mentioned these, but they seem like a potential booming industry in LEO. And one that likely will be cheaper to service and upgrade than to replace. I'm looking forward to watching that shake out.

Microsoft have been working on maintenance free, sealed data centers for a few years. I could see this being a good starting point for your proposal.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/6/17433206/microsoft-underwater-data-center-project-natick


Offline daveklingler

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Incidentally, is there a term like "cislunar" for "between LEO and cislunar, inclusive"? I can't think of one.  Cisterra?

In the absence of a better answer, I've decided to dub the volume between LEO through cislunar orbit, inclusive, "tellurian" space, after Tellus Mater. I can't believe there isn't already a term for this, and I expect now someone more informed than I will tell me what it is.

But if there isn't, perhaps this is my contribution to my species.  If I do nothing else in my lifetime, I can tell people I coined the term "tellurian space", and people will instantly congratulate me. 

What a great time to take a nap. I've earned it.  :)

(Blue Origin is concentrating on tellurian space infrastructure. I believe that's a better use of resources than founding the city of New Donner on Mars.)
« Last Edit: 07/03/2018 09:20 pm by daveklingler »

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