00:24:48 · Casey Handmer
And this is just, like, just as an idea, just like me mumbling into my phone and then forgetting about it. Yeah. So that's that's real money. That's real money right there. It'll be interesting to see if economic demand for intelligence in the form of, you know, AI tokens can saturate. I suspect not. Yeah. So that's the idea. Giant giant solar array GPUs. No. And and, like, data center in space, you have this, like, massive thermal problem, but you don't necessarily have that if you do it right. Like, instead of building, like, a giant box with full of racks of hardware and cooling systems, you can actually just, like, sprinkle the GPUs out along your solar array. Right? Because, like, each solar module generates a kilowatt and each GPU consumes a kilowatt and then just have, like, local Wi Fi or or or optical fiber link or something to transmit data up and down the the solar array, you know, train or or or chain or whatever, and then you've got, you know, a star tracker and a couple of radio antennas and stuff in the middle. Then if your GPU dies, who cares? And it's like, it's bolt on to a solar array, and the GPU is the expensive part. Does it make sense? So it's like, well, how do you replace a GPU when it dies? In a in a data center, you got all these fixed costs. And if your GPU dies, you gotta go find it and rip it out and put a new one in. In space, you're like, no. No. Like, I've got a 100 GPUs on this particular satellite, and one of them just died. And then 99 of them are still going fine. And, eventually, you know, maybe you're down to one or two or they're very old and you just deorbit, burn up, crash in Alaska.
00:26:19 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[00:26:19] S0: If you believe that Elon has the same view where token demand is effectively infinite, and if you just make more tokens or, you know, put more GPUs up there, someone will buy them, and either it'll be him or someone else, then how do you think he's thinking through the problem of just maximum scale as fast as possible? [00:26:39] S1: Well, it's not exactly a secret. And there's one other aspect of this, which is to say, Starlink as a business model is possible if you have, like, a legal monopoly lock on, you know, a plurality of the world's most talented engineers and a highly mature launch system that is extremely affordable. And as we've seen with Chinese, Russian, European, and other American attempts to compete in this space. It is extremely difficult to do if your satellites are not best in class, like, very good value, and then you don't have access to, you know, preferred launch, basically. So how do you do this as quickly as possible? There's probably some optimization to be done in terms of, like, maximizing tokens per kilogram, but, ultimately, it's about maturing Starship design and then scaling up production. So Starship Starship, Louisiana. Mhmm. Right? You got one one launch pad in Texas, two actually now, a couple going up in The Cape, and now they're saying 10 or 12 in Louisiana, and and who knows where else? [00:27:42] S0: This is another thing. He's building this massive launch facility in Louisiana.
00:27:42 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[00:27:42] S0: This is another thing. He's building this massive launch facility in Louisiana. [00:27:46] S1: And Well, I don't think any I don't think any, like, DOTA's been turned over yet. Mhmm. Again, like, you have to go through the federal agencies because it touches the coast, and it touches the Intracoastal Waterway, and it touches the Mississippi system. So the Army Corps of Engineers is gonna get a say, and it's adjacent to wildlife refuges. So, like, national parks is gonna get a say, then and the state's gonna get a say. And, like, by the time... Even even at Elon's speed, it may take a long time to get the thumbs up to really start moving on that. [00:28:13] S0: You think so? I kind of feel like he... You know, if if I think about the infrastructure projects that Elon has said that he's going to start, I can't think of a single one that didn't... Maybe Hyperloop might be one where he kinda said, like [00:28:27] S1: He didn't do that personally. Yeah. If you think about, like [00:28:30] S0: But with these [00:28:31] S1: Well, they started work on Starbase in, what, 2012 or something, and, like, not much really took place there until 2018. And then once they started working in in earnest, they were held up for months at a time. [00:28:40] S0: Do you not think that he's... He has, like, built teams that are much more effective in, like, ways that are much more effective at getting these large scale projects done? [00:28:49] S1: I mean, yeah. Definitely, like, the reps, you don't get worse at it for doing more of it. [00:28:52] S0: Yeah.
00:28:52 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[00:28:52] S0: Yeah. [00:28:52] S1: Yeah. And that's actually an interesting point. I think Anthony Michelangelo makes this point on on managing cut off quite often, which is that people say, well, you know, SpaceX makes the best rockets and and and so on. But, actually, like, SpaceX and Tesla are are also probably, like, the preeminent real estate development firms in the entire country right now, for example. [00:29:12] S0: For large scale projects? [00:29:13] S1: Just in general. Like, if you look at if you look at total cash flow to add it to those particular areas, they're just, like, best best in class across a range of areas at this point. [00:29:23] S0: If you had to think about the way that Elon operated ten years ago versus today, what do you think the biggest changes are? [00:29:30] S1: It's a good question. I was wondering about this myself the other day because it does... Certainly seems to me that that, like, there's less filter and he goes faster now. Yeah. It'd be interesting interesting to get get him on record about about how he feels about that, you know, whether he's become more or less hardcore or more or less consequentialist or, you know, how how he approaches talent development now versus in the past. For for me personally, it's certainly been a case of, like, unlearning a bunch of fairly, like, logically consistent but not actually useful assumptions or not correct assumptions that I had, you know, going in and then finding out the hard way that, like, no. Actually, the world doesn't work that way.
00:29:30 · Casey Handmer, Ty Morse
[00:29:30] S1: It's a good question. I was wondering about this myself the other day because it does... Certainly seems to me that that, like, there's less filter and he goes faster now. Yeah. It'd be interesting interesting to get get him on record about about how he feels about that, you know, whether he's become more or less hardcore or more or less consequentialist or, you know, how how he approaches talent development now versus in the past. For for me personally, it's certainly been a case of, like, unlearning a bunch of fairly, like, logically consistent but not actually useful assumptions or not correct assumptions that I had, you know, going in and then finding out the hard way that, like, no. Actually, the world doesn't work that way. [00:30:12] S0: I've noticed with a lot of Elon's companies, there's, like, this decade long baking period before Yeah. I'm surprised. [00:30:19] S1: Like, boring company didn't... I mean, like, they're drilling holes. It's great. Yeah. Like, it seems like it incubated for a long time. Yeah. Now all complicated things take time. I should know that as well as anyone. We've at this for over four years now, but maybe it's just, like, there's a minimum, like, six year spend or something to do a new kind of thing from the ground up. I don't know.
00:30:19 · Casey Handmer, Ty Morse
[00:30:19] S1: Like, boring company didn't... I mean, like, they're drilling holes. It's great. Yeah. Like, it seems like it incubated for a long time. Yeah. Now all complicated things take time. I should know that as well as anyone. We've at this for over four years now, but maybe it's just, like, there's a minimum, like, six year spend or something to do a new kind of thing from the ground up. I don't know. [00:30:37] S0: Elon, ten years ago or twenty years ago, would start off with a relatively small team, and the company would just take probably, like, six or eight years to bake before they had, like, a real, you know, good product to... That they wanted to ship. Like, I think it took that long for Tesla. I think that took roughly that long for a rocket to make it to orbit. I think it's the same [00:30:57] S1: thing. Beginning. [00:30:58] S0: Yeah. I think it's the same thing for Neuralink and Boring Company where they're starting to, like, they're starting to ramp on the Neuralink implants, and they're starting to ramp on the number of tunnels dug or, like