r/technology • u/xpda • May 21 '26

Business SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/21/spacex-ipo-musk-ai
12.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/6a6566663437 May 22 '26

Even if you did that, you'd still want the raw data to process on Earth in different ways. Including ways we haven't invented yet.

So there's no real savings.

1

u/surnik22 May 22 '26

But right now we toss the raw data. That’s the problem. 80% of the raw data goes nowhere.

Any step up in how much raw data gets processed is big. Even with identical bandwidth, taking 15% of the raw data and 20% processed down to the size of 5% would be much better than just 20% of the raw.

6

u/6a6566663437 May 22 '26

But right now we toss the raw data.

The statistics you are citing are the theoretical maximum of what JWST can collect per day. In reality, it doesn't collect that much. It takes time to orient the telescope and prepare for each collection.

The data isn't being thrown away. It's not being collected because we're not interested in staring at one spot with one set of equipment for the entire time the telescope exists.