Musk's Orbital Data Centre Idea Is Getting More Stupid By The Day
How does anyone believe this?
Whatever Musk has been smoking, I don’t want any, because it seems his last few functioning neurons have fallen out of his nose. Originally, his orbital data idea was laughable. But now that details have emerged about how Musk plans to pull off this grand scheme, it seems even more idiotic than once believed. These are either the drivelings of a power-crazed moron or something more insidious is going on.
Let’s start at the beginning. Despite what Musk claims, orbital AI data centres are not cheaper than terrestrial ones. As I have covered before, it costs roughly nine times more to launch AI data centres into space than to operate them here on Earth, so even during an energy crisis, orbital data centres are significantly more expensive. On top of that, it would cost tens of trillions of dollars to build and deploy the 100 GW of solar arrays to space that Musk has promised, and they would need to be completely replaced every five years or so when the satellites they are attached to deorbit. Oh, and building these satellites on the Moon, as Musk has suggested, doesn’t solve any of these problems and, in fact, will make them worse. Yet, Musk still wants to deploy an orbital AI data centre constellation of one million satellites!
The Satellite
As usual, Musk is pig-headedly carrying on, and in a recent presentation for Terrafab (with more on that in a bit), he showed off the first rough rendering of one of these AI data centre satellites and some details about SpaceX’s plans to get them to orbit.
The “AI Sat Mini”, as shown above, has a solar array size of roughly six metres by 150 metres, for a total area of 900 square metres (using Starship V3 as a scale reference) — which, in orbit, can theoretically provide 216 kW of powerwhen not in Earth’s shadow. This makes total sense, as Musk stated that this satellite can provide 100 kW of AI computing power, and SpaceX recently confirmed that its planned AI satellites would operate at altitudes of 500–2,000 km. At these orbits, the satellite would experience roughly 35 minutes of darkness per orbit, meaning it would require a significantly overpowered solar panel and a sizable battery to remain operational during that time. As such, the power demands, the computational power delivered, and the orbital location all make sense so far. That’s a great start; well done, SpaceX!
This is going to sound crazy, but the AI Sat Mini is nearly identical to a hypothetical estimate I made months ago for Musk’s orbital data centre satellites, based on the Nvidia GB200 NVL72 rack (read more here). I estimated that an LEO AI satellite based on this 1,360 kg rack would require 880 kg of solar arrays, 471 kg of batteries, 172 kg of radiators for cooling, and 262 kg of radiation shielding to protect the chips inside, for a total mass of 3,145 kg. This Nvidia rack delivers 120 kW of AI compute power, and luckily, all of these components scale with power demand, so we can estimate that Musk’s AI Sat Mini has a mass of roughly 2,620 kg, equivalent to a large car.
That is lighter than you might expect. Let’s optimistically assume these satellites can fold up incredibly small, and Starship’s ability to launch a large number of them is only limited by their mass (rather than volume). Let’s also optimistically assume Starship can reach its promised 100 tons to LEO payload. In that case, Starship can launch 38 of these AI Sat Minis per launch. And, according to my calculations, a fully reusable Starship, if it is ever possible, would cost $70 million (read more here).
So, how much would this satellite cost?
Well, that Nvidia rack, which I based my estimate on, costs $5.9 million, and the cost of the space-rated solar panels, radiators, shielding and construction required to make it a satellite will run into the millions of dollars. So, let’s be insanely generous and say that each AI Sat Mini will cost $8 million a pop.
With these satellite estimates and very optimistic launch assumptions, we can figure out how Musk plans to deploy, maintain, and use this constellation. And guess what? It makes no sense at all.
Launching & Maintaining the Satellites
Okay, so how long would it take to deploy a million of these satellites? And how much would it cost?
At a rate of 38 AI Sat Minis per launch, it would require 26,315 Starship launches to get a million of these satellites into orbit. If SpaceX launched a Starship full of these satellites every single day, it would take over 72 years to reach a million in orbit, as Musk has promised. That many satellites would cost $8 trillion, and that many launches would cost $1.8 trillion for a total cost of $9.8 trillion!
Except these costs aren’t even accurate, because the satellites won’t last that long. To reduce orbital debris, SpaceX places its satellites in an orbit that will decay and deorbit roughly five years after deployment. I can’t find anything to confirm or deny whether the same will be true for these AI satellites.
But, even if Musk plans to keep these AI satellites in orbit perpetually, the chips inside them won’t last that long. Meta found that the AI chips it was using were failing at a rate of 9% annually. These satellites will be operating in far more extreme conditions, so the failure rate could be significantly higher. But let’s be generous and assume the failure rate will be the same.
That means that after 72 years of daily launches and deploying a million AI satellites to orbit, there will only be 154,000 functional satellites in orbit. At this point, equilibrium is met, as the number of AI satellites SpaceX can deploy from its daily launches per year will be the same as the number of satellites lost to failure per year.
So, what does SpaceX have to do to get a million operational AI satellites in orbit in a realistic amount of time?
