Elon described a goal of 100 gigawatt per year for AI Data centers in space. This will need about 30k-50k starship launches per year.
The US has about 460 Gigawatts of electricity if the energy was constantly generated. Five years of launches at the target rate would surpass current US electricity for AI in Space.
This will mean each year they will triple the $1.4 trillion that OpenAI is going for 2025-2030. OpenAI is looking at 35 gw of AI data centers on earth.
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30k-50k per year or 82-136 per day?
Goggle has launched a moonshot to place data centers in orbit. I have written a short paper on the dangers the data centers face – radiation, impacts and corona mass ejections.
I propose to mitigate those risks by clearing the wilderness. This would entail removing the radiation belts, recycling artificial junk, harvesting natural material within near Earth and erecting a second magnetosphere. Achieving these three effects will significantly reduce costs and extend the reliability and availability of the system.
If you need the data and the computation, you can move the datacenter in space.
No permit, no protest in front of your center, no bribes from local politicians, etc.
No competition for electricity power from others.
Well, this is progress, at one time Musk was dismissing SPS as a fantasy.
Elon still does not want to beam the power. But if others can develop that capability then he will use it where it makes sense. He wants to generate it in orbit and use it in orbit. Just like he generates power for Starlink at 200 MW (total over 9000 satellites now) and will soon generate it at 5 Gigawatts for V3 starlink communication (50,000 satellites) and then his first major scaling for AI in space 1 million satellites (100 gigawatts)
Kesler syndrome will bring it all crashing down, literally and metaphorically. Rockets may soon be unable to safely escape Earth’s LEO, and it’s just a matter of time before some of those 1000s of satellites lands on something valuable or someone.
Kesler syndrome isn’t as much of an issue at the altitudes being used for Starlink, where there’s actually significant atmospheric drag, an unpowered satellite or hunk of debris will naturally deorbit within a few years. Starlink satellites only stay up as long as they do thanks to ion thrusters.
They also do extensive autonomous collision avoidance.
But I suspect the day is fast approaching when SpaceX will decide to offer an orbital debris removal service, if only to protect themselves.
What does it even mean? Energy plants in orbit? If so then this energy could be used for applications on Earth. Tbh, AI fatigue is settling in. At least Elon is using AI correctly: free up people from menial task of driving cars.