Overview
- Over the past three weeks, SpaceX filed FCC plans for an orbital computing network that could scale to as many as one million low‑Earth‑orbit satellites.
- Elon Musk touts a two‑to‑three‑year path to low‑cost space AI and says he intends to merge xAI into SpaceX to pursue the concept, with long‑term ideas that include a lunar factory for AI satellites.
- Experts quoted by Fortune say near‑term scale is unrealistic due to requirements for enormous solar arrays, heat rejection in vacuum, batteries to bridge eclipses, launch cadence, and debris management.
- Reference points highlight the gap: Starlink’s thousands of satellites collectively generate about 100 MW today, and one analysis estimates roughly $35 billion in added costs to place each additional gigawatt of data‑center power in orbit.
- Most analysts foresee only small pilot demonstrations by the end of the decade as grid pressure grows, echoed by Eric Schmidt’s warning that the U.S. needs roughly 92 GW of additional power for AI growth.