Posted on 01/31/2026 3:27:11 AM PST by SmokingJoe
BREAKING: SpaceX wants to turn Space into the World’s Biggest AI Data Center.
• SpaceX is seeking approval to launch and operate up to one million satellites designed to function as orbital data centers.
• These satellites would provide massive computing power to support advanced artificial intelligence and data processing.
• The system would rely on near constant solar energy in space, reducing operating costs and environmental impact compared to Earth based data centers.
• Satellites would operate between 500 km and 2,000 km in altitude, across multiple orbital shells, to handle global demand.
• High speed laser links would connect the satellites with each other and with the Starlink network, enabling petabit level data transfer.
• Data would ultimately be routed to authorized ground stations around the world.
• SpaceX says demand from AI, machine learning, and edge computing is growing faster than terrestrial infrastructure can handle.
The company frames this as a major step toward a future where humanity becomes a multi planetary civilization powered by space based infrastructure.
(Excerpt) Read more at x.com ...
Nobody here has actually fought a nuclear war before.
Don’t make projections on false premises because you don’t like Musk putting AI data centers in space.
He will do it, and people like you/Democrats are not going to stop him.
He can do it if he likes. It’s still stupid.
Ordinarily I would say that this is too expensive and impractical, but given Elon's history, I can't wait to see it happen.
As one who understands spacecraft power budgets, I would ask that you prove your assertion. Spacecraft using solar power have limits and the biggest draw on power is transmission. Small satellites like these will have challenges, but that’s minor compared to the other challenges like radiation hardening would be (cost prohibitive) to be robust to a radiation attack. Mission assurance is a real thing and that costs money.
Small nuclear power generators are the solution for terrestrial AI centers, and in the end, everything in space costs more than on the ground.
But again I ask, what qualifies you to assert my comments are not sensible? You are jumping in and saying I don’t know what I speak of but you haven’t shown yourself to be anything but a basement quarterback.
You presume a great many things in your post that are either technically incorrect or politically very dangerous assumptions. Some regimes would be happy to see the world burn if the thought they were at risk at home.
Here is a RAND corporation study on the vulnerability of non-military satellites.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3028-3.html
Key Findings
A 400-km detonation would jeopardize many satellites
A detonation of 110 kilotons or greater would jeopardize up to about 20 percent of the satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) from prompt radiation.
Detonations larger than 110 kilotons would expose the same number of satellites to greater radiation.
A detonation of considerable yield could jeopardize another large fraction of LEO satellites from delayed effects of trapped electrons for years.
Relaunching and quickly reconstituting a satellite constellation might not be feasible.
Exactly how many satellites would be jeopardized and for how long depends on where trapped electrons would be concentrated and how many.
The detonation could interfere with radio communications between the ground and satellites locally for hours.
A 400-km detonation or any detonation within LEO would significantly degrade space-based communications, remote sensing, and weather services.
You have at least scratched the surface of the problem. Good on you for not just dismissing the issue.
Earth's circumference is about 25,000 miles. So if you spaced satellites every 1/2 mile from each other, you could put 50,000 satellites in orbit in one ring at say 500 km. Then if you made another ring at 550 km (that's 50 km spacing between rings), that's another 50,000 satellites. Keep going and by the time you've hit the orbital ring at 1,500 km, you've got your 1 million satellites. In 20 layered orbital rings on top of each other.
And there are thousands of these one million stacked orbits you could do with inclination changes, and going further out from the earth, etc.
King Solomon was.
“Do we really need all this AI crap?”
It’s a double-edged sword. AI is great for researching because it can find a lot of info in seconds that might take a person hours/days/weeks to find.
Other than that, I consider it a toy - and it can cause problems - the X AI censors see a key word or phrase and automatically ding you for it, because AI can’t really reason or recognize idiom/colloquialisms - it’s because it tends to have the same ignorance/biases that those who program it have.
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