Massimo Piazza

Engineer @ space systems, computer vision, constellations, launch | e/acc.
Here mostly to geek out on aerospace, AI, nuclear, free markets, geopolitics.

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

That's the same tendency to max out (at least on paper) that we've seen in the 90s & in 2015, but under different scarcity constraints. Some of that is very real, some of that is not.
- In the 90s folks rushed to fill up GEO, bottlenecked by the effective orbital real estate available. (Important to note "effective" because you may have a huge geostationary orbital plane, but at multi-hundred-meter orbit uncertainty covariances there's not much you can safely park there)
- In 2015 operators rushed to fill up RF spectrum with LEO constellations. Current filings are nowhere close to maxing out on what's possible from an effective real estate perspective (i.e. you end up w/ plenty of shells available at all sorts of inclinations & altitudes between 350 km and say ~1200 km). It's not about how much we can fit, but rather about how much we can emit & coordinate w/o interfering @ given frequency, beamwidth, sidelobes, etc.
- Now we're somewhat back to the 90s scenario, but with a way larger real estate compared to GEO, still limited by the fact that everyone wants the dawn-dusk premium. Interference is basically impossible if all your data is routed through laser links (to the extent that optical comms doesn't even need to be regulated).

Given the right amount of coordination, GNSS-like covariances and Stargaze, I'm confident plans for 1M+ satellites are absolutely doable from a safety standpoint. But still, you better max out now.

I would in general expect anyone w/ access to internal launch at cost to file for a similarly sized constellation, i.e. waiting for you Rocket Lab.

[Aaron Burnett @aaronburnett]

Blue Origin filing for 51k ODC satellites. 3 months ago we suggested that SSO could become a land grab in our analysis. there is a good reason for it. The new space race is all about inference

https://t.co/2snoaSO3C6

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@nvidia @JensenHuang @_FriedrichMerz Jensen single-handedly saving a G7 nation be like

[NVIDIA @nvidia]

Germany knows how to build, and now it’s bringing that expertise to industrial AI. 🇩🇪

Tonight in Berlin, @JensenHuang and Chancellor @_FriedrichMerz discussed combining German engineering with NVIDIA AI to advance manufacturing and automotive.

We’re also backing Germany’s builders, with new planned investments in Agile Robots SE, @aveliosmed, @MireloAI, and @reflexaerospace, spanning robotics, healthcare, creative tools, and space.

Meet the companies and catch up on today’s news from Berlin: https://t.co/hTnsNMbPa6

[Everyday Astronaut @Erdayastronaut]

@elonmusk Serious question, I know you’re planning on COPVs and such in the back seat area, and some cold gas thrusters... but why have thrusters on the bottom? When do you want to decrease downforce? Unless, simply, to fly 🤔😂

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

Elon setting the bar for the future be like: don’t wanna waste my BOM on a steering wheel unless it makes Mach diamonds

[Tesla @Tesla]

Holy smokes

[Eric Berger @SciGuySpace]

It is poetic that Starship reached orbit 18 years, to the date, after the Falcon 1 rocket. 'Orbit Day' should be a perpetual holiday at the company.

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Sholto, thank you for setting the record straight. Larger issue is that multiple very serious people in Silicon Valley have heard some variation of this and believe it to be true. And the reason it is believable to so many is that it is consistent with Dario’s public messaging and what he outlined in the essay you shared: this technology *might* be dangerous for humans in multiple ways, could lead to extreme concentration of economic power (as outlined in the essay) and therefore needs to be regulated thoughtfully. I agree with the potential risks and I believe Dario makes all of these arguments in good faith.

As discussed on the pod, if one agrees that AI *might* be dangerous, there are two ways to address this potential risk. Either concentrate it in the hands of a chosen few companies and politicians via regulation or distribute it widely. Essentially boils down to whether one believes AI is too dangerous to concentrate or too dangerous to distribute. There are reasonable arguments on both sides, but I profoundly agree with Zuckerberg’s statement that: “The notion that AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems inherently problematic. Historically, hoping that an absolute power will benevolently provide for humanity if sufficiently enlightened has not led to safe or positive outcomes.” And as Dario says in the aforementioned essay, “some may object that we can simply keep AIs in check with a balance of power between many AI systems, as we do with humans.” I believe this is the best path forward: I want as many AIs as possible to maximize the odds that one shares my own particular values. And as Dario notes, no human has ever been able to take over the world.

At this point, I think safe to say that Dario has lost the argument. His messaging has failed to result in his preferred regulatory path. The fact that the only solution to the recent incident where an unreleased advanced OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face was an open-source model likely ended any chance of strict near-term regulation. Essentially every major company other than Anthropic has signed Jensen’s letter.

However, Dario’s messaging has been massively helpful to efforts to ban datacenters here in America. I suspect we will see anti-datacenter advocacy groups runnings ads using clips of Dario warning about how dangerous AI could be for humans. His good faith efforts in favor of regulation are now increasing the odds that AI will not be beneficial for Americans and humans everywhere. I believe that there is a reasonable chance AI might help us cure most forms of disease such that we have extended lifespans and can enjoy these long lives in an abundant Star Trek like future. That is the future that I want and I think Dario is decreasing the odds of that future at this point.

He is about to be the CEO of one of the most important public companies in the world and given that the pro-regulatory effort has failed (at least for now), I respectfully think he should make an effort to be a more positive advocate for his own industry. And if I am wrong and we do need to regulate this technology, he will be a more effective advocate for this in the future having been open-minded to the alternative.

And for the sake of clarity and as I outlined on the pod, I think Anthropic has deep competitive advantages and is an amazing company. Ironically, the main risk I saw to Anthropic a few months ago was nationalization as a result of Dario’s own rhetoric and behavior.

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@JensenHuang @michaeljburry won’t understand the dangerous game he’s playing till he sits down and tries to understand the technology he’s betting against

[M. V. Cunha @mvcinvesting]

Someone please call Michael Burry.

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@MajusiMr @mvcinvesting direct competition with @Astra

[NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman @NASAAdmin]

I will weigh in, reinforce some of the programmatic changes made, but also use the opportunity to emphasize the importance of getting things right from here forward.

NASA can’t succeed if it is trying to take on endless complex and costly development programs in parallel: SLS, ML-2, EUS, Gateway, crewed vehicles, a deorbit vehicle, replacement station-as-a-service, all the exciting science missions we all love, and a healthy fleet of X-planes. The solution becomes partnering with everyone who can fill holes in the self-inflicted strategy, which leads to more compromises. Those partners then run into their own budget challenges or quality issues, and the solution is simply to slip the schedule until what you eventually get, if you get it at all, is no longer relevant. This should be reasonably obvious when you look at the pace of progress: years between big missions, stretching out on-orbit ISS missions, one signature X-plane that wasn’t flying much, and years between big science programs.

Recycling a lot of parts from Shuttle may have been logical in 2005, as I am sure many of the programs envisioned in years past seemed logical at the time, but it led to a lunar rocket where Saturn V was materially better at converting pad mass to mass headed for the Moon, while simultaneously building a lunar Gateway in an NRHO orbit that shifts a huge performance burden to the landers because of compromises made earlier in the Orion/ESM design. The indefinitely paused Gateway concept also came with safety concerns, including limited abort opportunities, along with orbital and communications disadvantages. Not to mention, it is just another costly and complex “part” in what is already an incredibly hard equation, and one we haven’t solved in more than half a century. We also want to be building the infrastructure for an enduring presence on another world..not above it.

Mistakes of the past are what lead us down the path of a single lunar rover-as-a-service, when you need dozens for the future Moon Base, a dream state reactor-as-a-service, because you can’t afford to do it the right way, one X-plane, and ultimately means you get none of what you actually want on the Moon because you spread yourself too thin to develop something extremely difficult in a logical, iterative way.

Now we are fixing the SLS program, standardizing, and getting into a cadence of launches that will ensure NASA astronauts can get to the Moon at least yearly until other commercial and more affordable means of transport are available. By that point, we should already be well prepared for the ‘Nuclear NASA’ transition. Artemis, as a program, will certainly live on past any one launch platform.

I say all this because the second space race is going to be a lot closer than it needed to be, and under this Administration, we are going to ensure the third race will never be in question.

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

Folks are underestimating so much the impact of the new (and long overdue) EPFD framework established by the FCC.
FCC estimates this can unlock 8x capacity for a given area & no. of Starlink sats, and the timing couldn’t be better as an insane capacity ramp begins w/ Starlink v3. So the bottleneck now shifts towards aggregate Mbps/km² rather than GEO-protectionist regulations.

This means Starlink can now meaningfully compete w/ terrestrial ISPs even in urban/suburban areas and grab a huge chunk of their market share (i.e. of their global market share potentially, if the rest of the world’s regulators follow suit)

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@capitalatrisk23 Financial illiteracy + risk aversion + an already old aging population make the avg italian just the perfect target for their shitty high-margin products.
Wake up folks and go get some damn equities of something created in the past 30 years please

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@Sauers_ next up: number of dudes kidnapped by hacking into a Waymo

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@actsmaniac Plus any attempt at creating new housing supply in the city is met with backlash that leads to stagnation of an utterly dysfunctional system.
Just let the markets be free, that’s all it takes.

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

this platform’s SNR will always be unmatched

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter.

AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country.

Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.

The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.

https://t.co/AUKzoQ5Ikb

[Viv @battleangelviv]

Bonjour la France.

Tiens, regarde ça …

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@paulg aka the commoditization of LinkedIn posts

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

All jokes aside, findings like these are what make me increasingly convinced that Demis' proposed framework is the way to go. We simply can't afford to have semi-incompetent government agencies regulating this. All we need is incentive alignment for reasonable oversight directly from the folks at the frontier.
https://t.co/K2RIqyoMVI

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

https://t.co/PTeDiv1b6L

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

@sama @huggingface 5.6 Sol reminds me of that one student who would rather put a humongous effort into cheating than actually study and get full marks for 1/10th the effort

[Massimo Piazza @squareospace]

time to confess that for non-technical subjects during high school (e.g. Latin, which yeah that's a mandatory thing in italy) I went so far as to spend entire afternoons photoshopping & printing fake water bottle labels to copy every single word off them, cause it was indeed more fun. so yeah I feel you Sol