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 ...
True. I have my telescope-spaceship, so I don’t have to leave Terra Firma.
For 2025, SpaceX’s total revenue is projected at approximately $15.5 billion. Musk stated that NASA contributes about $1.1 billion of that, which works out to roughly 7% ($1.1B / $15.5B ≈ 7.1%). In a related post, he specified “~$1B out of ~$15B total, so ~7%” for NASA revenue in the context of that year.
Other sources say otherwise.
Yeah he better send up some space junk gathers first.
There was a old TV comedy show about space trash workers.
More targets for your enemies.
DING...DING...DING...WINNER!
it occurs that this target in the sky would be vulnerable to asymmetric warfare in which relatively cheap rockets could disable immensely expensive space farms.
We are talking about hundreds of thousands to a million satellites, which make the system extremely redundant and difficult to destroy. Destroy a hundred thousand and the system becomes marginally slower.
Meanwhile, the launch sites of the missiles are known with precision, and subject to retaliation with some ease, with considerable ease of a “rods from god” capability is used.
The Musk/USA/SpaceX economic advantage in lift to orbit cost is about 10X now, and is likely to get to 100x in a few years.
Its 7% of SpaceX revenue (see my previous Post) and its not “subsidies, unless you are talking about SpaceX subsidizing NASA.
For example SpaceX charged NASA approximately half what Boeing charged to deliver astronauts to the Space Station, and Space X delivered 4 years earlier and counting, and did it flawlessly.
No SpaceX and America would still be depending on Russia to deliver US Astronauts to Space Station up to today, like America did from 2011 to 2020,
Yeah - at that scale each one of those dots is about the size of a large city or county.
Well, outer space is definitely NIMBY! In fact it fits BANANA too.
Go for it!
I’m not arguing space Xs contributions.
I’m still waiting for your reply to 57.
>> What will happen when someone detonates a large nuke in space? Talk about putting your eggs in the most fragile basket ever.
If it’s AI and it gets nuked, so what? Screw AI and the humanist horse it rode in on.
And that’s good. NASA shouldn’t be in commercial space. They should only be doing the hard stuff that business can’t see a profit motive in.
You think if people are ready to go to nuclear war, they are going to attack space and leave their enemy countries on earth free?
How so?
>> can we please recognize/admit this and pivot toward reality
Shhhhh... it can be our little secret, just between you and me. Oh, and GOD.
I would think land based data centers would be more vulnerable to missile attacks.
>> i want to know how that Boring Company is working out ...
I heard they’re shafting us.
There will be value in AI, just don’t put it in a vulnerable place. The future of warfare will require AI of some form. A battle field tank today can not survive a swarm of drones. Extend this to any case where a man in the loop has to compete against AI in an OODA decision loop. Computers have been able to beat chess masters for decades. AI will be so far ahead of human in the loop decision makers that they won’t know what hit them.
Something so important can’t be placed where it can be taken out in a single event. A satellite constellation is fragile by its very nature.
I was commenting about nuclear war on Earth's surface as opposed to nuclear war in Earth's atmosphere.
The most powerful nuclear explosion of all time was in the atmosphere, above a large Russian island in the Arctic Ocean, in 1961.
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