StarCloud’s Nvidia H100 chip launch, Google’s TPU plans for 2027, and Elon’s ambitious 100 GW target by 2030 via SpaceX’s Starship.
Challenges include chip shortages, high launch costs (needing under $80M per 40 MW payload for viability), and timelines akin to delayed projects like robotaxis.
Starlink’s evolution will be from V2/V3 and AI versions of V3 satellites and V4 scaling to 50-200 kW for 50-200 chips).
NASA’s shift to Jared Isaacman (a SpaceX ally) as administrator to accelerate moon missions.
This will transform the future space industrialization (moon/Mars fabs, mining), energy scales beyond Earth’s nuclear output, and economic booms for Tesla/SpaceX/xAI.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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None of the newer semiconductor processes are radiation hard. Truly radiation hardened processes are perhaps a decade behind in terms of feature size. If you want to use modern electronics in orbit, they would need to be shielded somehow. Physical shielding like polyethylene for low mass particles like neutrons, or protons, or metals for X, gamma, or cosmic rays.
A magnetic field could protect from lower energy charged particles. This might be practical for a large installation, particularly if the computational equipment was separate from the photovoltaic equipment. The two parts could be in the same orbit, or be above, and below an orbit connected by a tether. Energy could be transferred by high voltage conductors, or by microwaves, or lasers.
You might be able to get by by using a low zero inclination orbit, thus avoiding the polar regions, and the south Atlantic magnetic anomaly. At these altitudes there is relatively more drag. Maybe this would be the first application for ion thrusters deriving their reaction mass from stray bits of atmosphere.
Google and others have done radiation tests. The radiation error rates are manageable. Just some satellite shielding and error rates are low enough for AI inference for memory and chips.
Others have designed radiation resistance and deployed with advanced chips at the 7nm node
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/11/google-project-suncatcher-to-put-tpus-for-ai-in-space-in-2027.html
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/11/space-grade-chips-and-hundreds-of-megawatts-of-solar-in-space-exist-today.html