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Tuesday, December 16, 2025

16: Andrew McCalip

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Economics of Orbital vs Terrestrial Data Centers I love space. I live and breathe it. I'm lucky enough to brush the heavens with my own metal and code, and I want nothing more than a booming orbital space economy that creates the flywheel that makes space just another location we all work and visit. I love AI and I subscribe to maximum, unbounded scale. I want to make the biggest bets. I grew up half-afraid we'd never get another Apollo or Manhattan. I truly want the BigThing. .................... The target I care about is simple: can you make space-based, commodity compute cost-competitive with the cheapest terrestrial alternative? That's the whole claim. Not "space is big." Not "the sun is huge." Not "launch will be cheap." Can you deliver useful watts and reject the waste heat at a price that beats a boring Crusoe-style tilt-wall datacenter tied into a 200–500 MW substation? ..................

Orbit has to win on cost, or it has to admit it's doing something else entirely.

.............. If you run the numbers honestly, the physics doesn't immediately kill it, but the economics are savage. It only gets within striking distance under aggressive assumptions, and the list of organizations positioned to even try that is basically one. ...........

A tilt-wall datacenter in Oregon with cheap power, cheap cooling, and technicians on call is hard to beat.

........... I feel genuine secondhand embarrassment watching people torch their fortunes on yachts and status cosplay. No one cares about your Loro Piana. If you've built an empire, the best possible use of it is to burn its capital like a torch and light up a corner of the future. Fund the ugly middle. Pay for the iteration loops. Build the cathedrals. This is how we advance civilization. ..................... After that, we can do the fun part: thermal diagrams, radiator math, orbit beta angles, failure rates, comms geometry, all the shiny engineering details that make this topic so addicting. It's not obviously stupid, and it's not a sure thing. That's why it's worth doing the math. .............

It might not be rational. But it might be physically possible.

Will we ever be able to make our own products again? ......... A country that cannot produce its own goods is inherently fragile. ...... We’re not in first place. We killed the golden goose to increase quarterly profits. We lack both the capacity and the skills. We ought to create more high-paying manufacturing jobs, not low-paying manufacturing jobs. ........... After adjusting for the cost of living an average salary in Shenzhen is approximately $2,730, while in Houston, it's about $4,414. We’re 61% more expensive right off the bat. In addition to labor differences, other nations actively subsidize their raw material inputs. It’s tough to make the economics work when you’re so far behind. ............ It feels like a barren wasteland of talent, with a huge vacuum left by the retiring skilled tradesmen. In addition to a population crisis, we are certainly facing a hardware-skilled labor crisis. Nearly every week, I’m desperately begging vendors to take our money. It's quite literally like the Futurama Fry meme—money in hand, begging someone to take it. More often than not, the answer is “we don’t have the capacity.” I’m a tiny customer, and we have no macro-scale event currently happening. This is not what national resilience looks like. .............

China has its shit together in a way difficult for us to replicate, in regard to manufacturing.

............. Every dollar of revenue in China is compounded into creating their huge critical mass of machines, infrastructure, and expertise. The plan has been running for decades now. They're climbing the ladder of technology as we paid them to do it. We could do the same. We could simply decide that it matters to make stuff here. ........... We're dealing with a scale truly hard to appreciate. We’re at least a trillion dollars behind. ................ In the long run, there are only two sustainable, tariff-free paths to achieving global competitiveness in American manufacturing:

• Specialization: becoming the best in a specific sector through deliberate investment in capital equipment and the development of a highly-skilled technical workforce
•Technology-driven productivity gains: achieving productivity improvements that offset our comparative labor and raw material cost disadvantages

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

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