Martin 🌐

Difference in quality between NASA and SpaceX’s launch livestreams.

The energy war just changed. America burns coal at night to keep the lights on while China built something different and most people have no idea it exists. In the middle of the Gobi Desert, there is a 263-meter tower surrounded by 12,000 mirrors in a perfect circle, spread across nearly 8 square kilometers of barren land. It looks like something out of a science fiction film. They are focused on a single point at the top of that tower, raising temperatures above 800 degrees Fahrenheit. That heat gets pumped into tanks filled with a special liquid salt mixture. They are using Molten salt, the same stuff ancient civilizations used to preserve food is now storing the sun's energy at 565 degrees Celsius. When the sun goes down, the plant keeps generating electricity. The molten salt stays hot for hours after sunset and drives a steam turbine on demand. This is a 100-megawatt power station that runs 24 hours a day on sunlight alone. It produces over 390 million kilowatt-hours of power every single year. Every coal plant on earth has one critical weakness, it needs fuel to burn. This plant needs nothing but the sun and a tank full of heated salt that refuses to cool down. The implications are enormous. The oldest argument against solar energy has always been: "What happens at night?" China just answered that question with 12,000 mirrors and a tower visible from space.

Starship uses ~$10k of fuel per 1T to orbit. A cargo plane uses ~$1.5k to fly 1T accros the world. Once you have fully reusable rockets, the price difference between sending something to another continent or to space won’t be that high. We’ll see 10,000+ launches a year soon.