Rocket parts can double as data center hardware

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 31:52

   is how do you make this economical? Meaning, we could do all of these things. Sure, we could build data centers in space. But if it's wildly expensive, it's a little economic utility. And so the question that I've had from the beginning of starting this company is, what is the path to cost-competitive economics? Like, how do you get the cost of producing the output service, in this case, a GPU hour, to be on cost parity with what it costs to build it terrestrially?

2. 32:23

   And if you really think about it, this is fundamentally an apples to orange comparison, right? Because on the one hand, if you want to power a GPU on the ground, you need a building, you need a power plug, you need some cooling, and you need to, like, do real estate stuff, right? In the case of powering that thing in orbit, you're talking about putting methane in an engine and like building a structure and like leaving it up there for a decade or five years or whatever.

3. 32:55

   All this to say the physics of how you produce the same thing are very different, but that does not, that has not prevented us from asking the question and really answering what does it cost and how low can we go. And going real low means being creative. And this is hopefully going to put a little bit more color on the idea earlier of the entire vehicle, the entire rocket is the data center. Why would we do that?

4. 33:24

   What's the point of that? Well, let me show you. It's so that we have. We have parts on our rocket that do two jobs, so that we don't need two parts. And I think this is going to be pretty cool. So I want you to think about a rocket in two forms. One, on the way to space, and two, when it's already in space. So on the left side, you'll see pictures of different parts of the rocket on ascent when it's a rocket.

5. 33:53

   And the second one will show you what that looks like when it's in orbit and it's a satellite. So, first things first, the outer shell of the rocket, the nose cone, the aerodynamic shell of the rocket, has a specific purpose on ascent. It's for aerodynamics, right? In our design, when we get to orbit, the actual fairing folds out, and it starts working as a radiator. And so that extra metal, the metal that we would have taken up anyways as a part of the rocket itself, does a part of the satellite's job when it's there.

6. 34:36

   And in turn, less stuff you have to take up. Similarly, propellant. Our design calls for a two-stage rocket that gets to a parking orbit. And then from there, it uses a different method of propulsion to get to its destination. In this case, it's electric propulsion. And the propellant that we're using is ammonia. Now, the interesting thing about ammonia is that it also works well as a coolant. And so the same working fluid that we use as a propellant on ascent, when we're in orbit, it, we can use that same tank and the residual ammonia in it as a cooling loop for the GPUs.

7. 35:26

   So imagine the tank of propellant that basically pushes this thing up to orbit when it's there will then take that same tank and start running it through the GPUs and extracting heat out from them and running it out to those big wings and bringing them all out to an even temperature so they can then dissipate the heat out. Genius. Double duty. Oh, this one is my favorite. So cold gas thrusters. Rockets have cold gas thrusters. And unlike the Empire, we've actually found a practical use for cold gas thrusters that does not involve kickflips.

8. 36:12

   The cold gas thrusters on our upper stage help orient the vehicle. When the thing is actually in orbit, we use the pressurized tanks to push the solar booms out. Didn't even need to do a kickflip, and it's actually useful. So, now, we will be building a reusable rocket. So, the booster gets reused, and we talked about this a moment ago. Because it's one engine architecture between the two stages of the rocket, when we get to an engine that is approaching end of life, we'll take that engine and we'll put it on the upper stage because that engine, when it's done with its orbit assign, actually gets deorbited along with the tank. So the last use an engine has is to take the second stage to orbit. So literally every part of this rocket will be reused. We're trying. We're trying. And the reason this matters is

9. 37:26

   because the more efficient we can get with what we take to space so Here's basically the thing. The rocket produces thrust, right? Every bit of thing that you're taking to space that makes money creates the equivalency between thrust and revenue, right? And so said differently, what we want to do is we want to be spending our thrust on things that generate revenue, not on other stuff. So that means cutting out redundant parts because we're spending valuable thrust to get that stuff to orbit.

10. 38:03

    So, for example, if every satellite needs a radiator, well, you could pack a rocket full of individual satellites that carries its own radiator, or you could reuse a part of the actual rocket as the radiator. Does that make sense? It does make sense. Are people following this? Does this make sense? All right, cool.