> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power<p>We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.<p>edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun's power. A few trillionths per year.

A former NASA engineer with a PhD in space electronics who later worked at Google for 10 years wrote an article about why datacenters in space are very technically challenging:<p><a href="https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/" rel="nofollow">https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...</a><p>I don't have any specialized knowledge of the physics but I saw an article suggesting the real reason for the push to build them in space is to hedge against political pushback preventing construction on Earth.<p>I can't find the original article but here is one about datacenter pushback:<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-08-20/ai-and-crypto-data-centers-are-nimbys-new-target" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-08-20/ai-and...</a><p>But even if political pushback on Earth is the real reason, it still seems datacenters in space are extremely technically challenging/impossible to build.

SpaceX is too big to fail. It's important for national security.<p>I wonder if Elon wants to tangle all his businesses into SpaceX so they are all kept afloat by SpaceX's importance.

As a SpaceX fan, I am saddened by this news.<p>The only reason for xAI to join SpaceX is to offload Elon's Twitter debt in the upcoming IPO.

This is why I come to this site. Obviously, Twitter's financials are struggling and theres more than a few people rich people who don't want to take the hit... but we can all drop that for a second to discuss the plausibility of data centers in space. Some links and comments I enjoyed:<p><pre><code> * https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station * "Technically challenging", a nice way to say "impossible" * "I’m not that smart, but if I were, I would be thinking this is an extended way to move the losses from the Twitter purchase on to the public markets." * "ISS radiators run on water and ammonia. Think about how much a kg costs to lift to space and you'll see the economics of space data centers fall apart real fast. Plus, if the radiator springs a leak the satellite is scrap." * "5,000 Starship launches to match the solar/heat budget of the 10GW "Stargate" OpenAI datacenter. The Falcon 9 family has achieved over 600 launches." [nerdsniper] * "No, we just "assume" (i.e. know) that radiation in a vacuum is a really bad way of dissipating heat, to the point that we use vacuum as a very effective insulator on earth." * "World's Best At Surfing A Temporary Hyperinflation Wave is not a life goal to really be proud of tbh"</code></pre>

Either this is a straight up con, or Musk found a glitch in physics. It's extremely difficult to keep things cold in space.

The Goalpost shift continues, If elon were working for me, I would have fired him for having never delivered on any of his projects.<p>Hyperloop > Neuralink > Self-Driving Cars > Robotaxi fleets > Personal Robots > Orbital Datacenters > [Insert next]

> "The only logical solution therefore is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a location with vast power and space. I mean, space is called 'space' for a reason. [crying laughing emoji]"<p>This is all the reasoning provided. It is quite sad how a company I admired so much has become embroiled in financial doohickery.

If you had told me 4 years ago that Twitter would be merged into SpaceX I would have called you crazy. Yet here we are..

If spacex can trick people into paying 10x as much for compute as the next datacenter, they'd be much better off simply building those datacenter satellites and driving them out to the desert and parking them there instead of trying to solve all the dumb problems you create for yourself by putting cutting edge electronics with the power density of electric heaters into space!

<elon venture> rescues failing <elon venture> here have some <unattainable goals> the shareholders love that shiz.

> The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.<p>> My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.<p>This is so obviously false. For one thing, in what fantasy world would the ongoing operational and maintenance needs be 0?

Seems like a great way to play games with moving money around. Come up with a "valuation" and then "acquire".

Just a neat bit of financial engineering. You can tell because Elon picked SpaceX instead of Tesla – which would have actually made sense at some level (Optimus Robots + AI). But Tesla is public and so he'd need to follow laws and reporting requirements.

> In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale.<p>I never questioned it.<p>Space is also extremely cold, and if it's as dense as Musk cooling won't be an issue.

From the Big Short (movie)<p>Jared Vennett (narration): "In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating agency's executives went to jail. The SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivatives industries."<p>"Just kidding. Banks took the money the American people gave them, and they used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby the Congress to kill big reform. And then they blamed immigrants and poor people, and this time even teachers."

We have trouble cooling data centers on earth, so instead we are going to put them in space where cooling is a thousand times harder?

I still don't understand the "data center in space" narrative. How are they going to solve the cooling issue?

> scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!<p>I didn't realize SpaceX's media press is even cringer than Elon's average tweet...

Too me this smells of projected cash desperation. Do people actually pay for Grok?

Anyone remember the quote by Russ Hanneman on SV [0] - "No Revenue, means you're potential pure play"<p>We know datacenters in space - sound plausible enough - yet not practical - hence they're potential pure play - also you can have massive solar in space - unlimited space -- etc -- all true -- but how economical / practical is it ?<p>yet we know on earth - to power the whole earth with solar - only a fraction of the land is needed. Hell it's even in the Tesla Master Plan v3 docs [1] - current limitation being storage & distribution<p>so all you - are now witnessing to the greatest scam ever pulled on earth.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo</a> [1]: <a href="https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf</a>

Thoughts:<p>1. What in the circular funding? This feels more like a financing scheme founding it under X/Twitter and then spinning it over to SpaceX. I suspect some debt is disappearing or taxes aren't getting assessed because of this move.<p>2. The only thing harder than harnessing "a millionth of the sun's power" on Earth would be launching enough material into space to do the same thing. And that's not even a reason for SpaceX to own an AI company, at least not at this point. The current AI isn't going to help with the engineering to do that. Right now hiring 20-somethings fresh out of college is way cheaper and SpaceX has been very successful with that.<p>quick edit: dang, I even got point 1 backwards. xAI owns X/Twitter, and that means that SpaceX now owns X/Twitter as well as an AI company. Super suspicious that SpaceX could actually think that buying the social media part (a significant portion of xAI's value) would be worth it.

Elon's usual modus operandi: take the thing that is losing money and merge it with the thing that is making money.<p>Prediction: at some point SpaceX will acquire all Tesla stock and take it private.

Why not put these AI/PV installations somewhere out in the ocean instead? A tiny fraction of the energy required to ship them there, you can actually physically get there to fix them, can use seawater for cooling, can use existing Starlink for connectivity, etc. Why/how is space more economical than international waters?

5 days after Tesla gave xAi 2 billion.

isn't this just fraud in broad daylight? I don't get it. Why not at least try to hide it?

There is literally an emoji in the middle of the announcement post. Very on brand for Elon.

I am concerned, and haven’t seen anyone else point this out yet, that Musk will move Grok’s CSAM generation capabilities to space to be beyond the reach of terrestrial policing. Does this create some sort of legal loophole here so Musk can do this with impunity?

Related: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission [1]. Blue Origin could snatch SpaceX's Starship lander contract. This looks increasingly a good idea.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/20/science/nasa-spacex-moon-landing-contract-sean-duffy" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/20/science/nasa-spacex-moon-land...</a>

Not sure if this is stock manipulation trying to push the bubble a little further in a way that doesn't require showing something of substance immediately, or if Elon's having another manic episode after doing too many or not enough drugs, but who didn't see this coming?<p>I'm sure next week he'll have SpaceX be bought by The Boring Company, sell that to Tesla, then rename all the companies as "X".<p>Also, whatever happened to his plan to turn twitter into a financial services company?

This is financial engineering for an IPO, whatever spurious justifications are provided.

> <i>Starship will be capable of landing massive amounts of cargo on the Moon […] to establish a permanent presence and take advantage of lunar resources to manufacture satellites and deploy them further into space.</i><p>The trouble with strip mining the moon is that it is a pristine international geological park where one side is permanently visible from Earth*. In terms of park visits it’s been seen by pretty much every human that ever existed. Take that, Yosemite. The far side will be banned from exploitation to maintain its unique park status as being almost completely radio silent.<p>Perhaps the mining will take place behind the ridge line of limbward mountains: technically on the near side but without being visible. Going underground feels like a bit of a stretch.<p>On the far side, how far does one have to be from the anti-Earth point before one can fire up the WiFi without pissing off the space telescopes?<p>Who will even regulate this stuff? Do we extend the Antarctic treaty for whole-lunar purposes?<p>*Worst case, a 5km wide strip mine is 10 pixels on a DSLR photo, but that’s still too much for some.

Accountants will be studying the deals and cyclical valuations of AI companies in the same way we study bank runs and FDIC insurance today.

Seems like a way to put a lot of junk in space. If thats in earth orbit it will lead to a lot of junk falling from the sky in 10 years. If it all burns up that will be a lot of nasty shit in the atmosphere - millions of tons!

> orbital data centers<p>I'm not a rocket scientist, but how do they plan to dispose of all the waste heat? The ISS carefully maintains its temperature, and it's not running racks-full of servers.<p>edit to add: this guy, who <i>is</i> a rocket scientist, explains exactly why it's a terrible idea, and yes, heat management is one reason. <a href="https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/" rel="nofollow">https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...</a>

<a href="https://www.spacex.com/updates#xai-joins-spacex" rel="nofollow">https://www.spacex.com/updates#xai-joins-spacex</a> additionally the longer article on SpaceX site

The really skeptical take here is that eventually all of Musk's companies merge, or at least the biggest ones, for juicing that market value to get that $1T payout. Looking at Tesla.

Grrreat! Grok in Space... now AI-generated non-consensual sexual materials can be made completely outside the jurisdiction of any earthly body!<p>Rah rah. Line goes up!

I was never comfortable with calling Twitter "X", but now i will gladly call it "spaceX". Maybe it will become a verb again "I spacex'd it"

Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea: <a href="https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/" rel="nofollow">https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...</a><p>Discussed earlier: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087616">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087616</a>

IF we develop beyond earth...then AI, robots and connectivity will likely be huge parts of it.<p>+ spacex already is the best way for many payloads to get to space.<p>+ starlink is already the best low orbit based connectivity solution.<p>+ x is already a great way to train virtual world AI.<p>+ tesla (and its robots) is a great way to train physical world AI.<p>+ space takes big $ and talent - this combo would have both.<p>the IF at the top is just that. but feels like an interesting convo for this crowd.

This makes me genuinely sad. SpaceX was the one thing of his that Elon has largely avoided screwing up. Imho, this is in large part due to Gwynne Shotwell. She seems to have the personality (not to mention, personal wealth) to kick Elon in the head when he tries to mess things up.<p>What’s happening now is nothing more than a transparent effort to couple the AI hype-wagon to SpaceX in order to drive the valuation higher in the minds of investors who still think that LLMs will completely transform society.<p>I’ll be thrilled if the rocket folks can avoid being distracted by this nonsense, but I’m not optimistic.<p>I’ve been following SpaceX since something like the 2nd Falcon 1 launch and this is the worst thing I’ve seen happen. Sad times.

Kind of a bad look - but I can't precisely say why. Maybe he thinks he can raise more capital this way than he could for each company separately? Especially raising more money for X might be quite hard - they seem to be quite a bit behind on the revenue side compared to OpenAI / Anthropic. With both companies merged he might just find enough retail investors willing to buy at sky high valuations.

This wouldn’t have anything to do with investigations ramping up, would it?

I thought xAi previously merged with twitter, so all of this is now rolled into SpaceX? Atleast the investors in xAi and the original financiers in twitter get a breather. SpaceX is the new bandaid for this hot mess. Let’s see if this ends up rotting SpaceX or if it gets healed.

Elon investors should try buying a lottery ticket, it also lets you dream of the future while not providing returns.

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This is either insanely ambitious genius or pure shithousery. I guess we'll find out which one it is in 10 years

"If you mix raisins with turds, they're still turds" - Charlie Munger<p>Another consequence of US NatSec being gradually privatized is that once your income stream derives mostly from government spending, it becomes an imperative to influence politics to secure that stream. Yet some of these companies will remain vulnerable to shifting political winds.

Doesn't the idea of Orbital Datacenters imply that the constraining resource right now is physical space, and not compute, electricity, etc?<p>Did we suddenly solve the electricity problem, or the compute problem? As far as im aware there are still plenty of datacenters being planned and built right now.

I've yet to attain full-stack mastery in my job, but Musk has already attained capital stack mastery.

Yes we should put a Skynet into space so we can't even pull the plug when there's a problem. What could go wrong, right? :D

They must have linked the wrong press release /s. I would have expected a press release about SpaceX acquiring xAI to talk about why they did that. Or at least mention xAI beyond the first paragraph. This is just Elon talking about space data centers

Politics and finances aside, I wonder how "sending megatons of mass" into space is more ecological than building power plants needed for data centers on earth? Not only all the fuel that you'd need to burn, but also the fact that this material probably can't be recycled since it will burn on reentry.

This is definitely better than merging with Tesla.<p>They can sell xAI/Grok to all automobile companies along with Tesla and other businesses(X.com included) just like the SpaceX services.<p>It would good to see how it was valued.

One thing to keep in mind. xAI and SpaceX both have contracts with the DoD. So it makes sense he moved it there rather than Tesla. Not sure I buy the needing AI for doing more in space or if this is to save sinking ship, but if one of his two big companies needed to buy it to keep it afloat it makes sense it was SpaceX and not Tesla.<p>I'm wondering if SpaceX's going public will be delayed. If not we'll see the first test of the public's appetite for what the AI companies' balance sheets look like

Orbital debris is a likely outcome of datacenters in space.<p>Orbital debris cannot be recovered without permission.<p>Wireless power beaming burns the atmosphere. If it is n % efficient, then where is the other 100-n % of that energy?<p>What is the minimum latency to each of the LaGrange points?<p>We should send humanoid robots to establish human-sized habitats with airlocks for a number of years before risking humans.<p>-- 2026

In the past 40 years we’ve seen power per unit of compute decrease by over 40 million times. This says we need to put data centers in space because we can’t produce enough power on earth for AI. That won’t be the case as history has shown, but this is a great way to get AI money for your space ships if you’re going to IPO.

Whenever computer chips go into space, they have to be hardened against radiation, because there is no atmosphere to protect them. Otherwise you get random bit flips.<p>This process takes a while, which is partly why all the computers in space seem out of date. Because they are.<p>No one is going to want to use chips that are a many years out of date or subject to random bit flips.<p>(Although now it got me thinking, do random bit flips matter when training a trillion parameter model?)

Genuine question: is it even theoretically possible to find some way to dump the heat that would be generated by a "data center" in space?

I'm pleased that Blue Origin and others are making progress on reusable flight hardware, because I fear that SpaceX will itself suffer a "RUD" for non-engineering reasons.

> My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.<p>I have never been so tempted to join Kalshi

> buy a dying social network for 44bil<p>> merge it with a company created out of thin air for 20bil.<p>> have a third company buy it.<p>put it back on the market for 1.5 trillion.

Just out of interest, what's the current 'state of the art' for a chip that is hardened to survive launch and any length of time in orbit?

Elon didn't want to get outshined after Sam Altman suggested that "maybe we build a big Dyson sphere around the solar system". When will people realize that these "geniuses" are only good at making money, and any benefit to society is coincidental.

What a clever trick to throw more money (governmental subsidies) into a sinking ship (xAI and "AI" in general). Perplexingly this maneuver will probably boost stock prices thus creating more monopoly money to burn resources with.

> Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year<p>Excuse my naive physics, but is there a point at which if you take enough mass off of earth and launch it into space, it would have a measurable effect on earth's orbit? (Or if the mass is still tethered to earth via gravity, is there no net effect?)

Let's call it for what it is, a payday for Elon. Paper billionaires have figured out they cannot cash out with out tanking their paper, so now you have these circular deals to extract as much as possible. If we had a functioning government they would step in and put an immediate stop to this on national security grounds.

If investors are falling for it, I guess all we can hope for is that the government doesn't bail it out!

So... Elon wants to literally build Skynet?

If Musk and SpaceX are serious about putting 1 million datacenter satellites into space, then they are not serious about Mars.<p>You cannot simultaneously build and launch 10’s of thousands of Starships to deliver 1 million tons of equipment and supplies bound to Mars while also committing to launching 10’s of thousands of Starships to orbit full of satellites.<p>They would need to quadruple their launch rate, and half of those launches would be Starships bound for Mars, the vast majority of which would never return.<p>How many Falcon9’s have ever been built? It is incredible to say you can build that many rockets and use up that much fuel on any reasonable time scale. You might as well say the Tesla Roadster version 3 will be a Single Stage to Orbit rocket car.

Didn’t Elon say that orbital solar collection was a stupid idea due to energy loss in transmission? Using AI as an almost proof-of-work shows that it may potentially be more complex problem than previously thought. If we threw Bitcoin miners up to those satellites you could literally beam money down.

Musk is moving value out of public hands and into his own. He overpaid $44B for Twitter, then rebranded it as an AI asset by folding X into xAI. He pushed Tesla to invest $2B of shareholder money into xAI despite shareholders voting no. Five days later, SpaceX acquired xAI, effectively turning Tesla’s cash into equity in a private company Musk owns far more of. Musk controlled every step, there was no real arm’s-length process, and he almost certainly knew the outcome in advance. Musk and his private investors get control, inflated valuations, and IPO upside. Tesla shareholders supply the cash, take the risk, and lose leverage.

Is there anything substantially different about Google's announcement <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813267">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813267</a> that makes it any more sane than the Space-X announcement?

"Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization"<p>So, basically give ourselves Kessler syndrome. Or is Elon trying to monopolize orbit entirely?

With that number of more satellites in orbit, launching a manned rocket into space is likely to be too risky due the amount of more debris and satellites. And will it be net energy positive solution ?

Elon prepping SpaceX for a meme-stock IPO?<p>Is there any other valid reason?<p>Datacenters in space is just stupid, getting rid of heat is much much easier on earth than in space.

Any details regarding valuations etc?

This is very clearly a move to sell SpaceX IPO at overinflated prices by promising a vision of a future which is perpetually 5 years away. SpaceX is going to be the next meme stock.

I suppose one of the ADR’s read something like “…who cares about bitflips, man. Isn’t AI all about probability?”<p>Knowing the insane level of hardening that goes into putting microcontrollers into space, how to the expect to use some 3nm process chip to stand a chance?

I have so many conflicting thoughts that I cannot properly articulate yet. I can say though, this is not going to end well for most, it is clumsily premeditated and starting to feel like dude is just trying to be a Neal Stephenson character.

Does this mean the foreign software engineers in xAI are now subject to ITAR?

I will not be left holding this bag. This is such financial engineering nonsense, and if we had any sort of regulatory controls this would never be allowed to happen - especially BECAUSE of national security reasons.

Just checking (genuine question) there wouldn't be a sneaky way to weaponize a million satellites in orbit around the Earth, would there? I can't imagine it wouldn't have ever been looked into.

FT says for 250 billion:<p><a href="https://archive.ph/NqhWj" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/NqhWj</a>

All that tech, and they can't create a nice readble vector map of the clear areas.

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I don't see the demand for space being there, OSS is driving costs down and there are still plenty of hardware and algorithmic optimizations we haven't deployed yet.

lol both companies belong to musk, and he uses investors' money on spacex to buy xAI? poor spacex investors...

<a href="https://tinyurl.com/xai-joins-spacex" rel="nofollow">https://tinyurl.com/xai-joins-spacex</a>

Do this math include the cost and weight of the radiators? Because it obviously can't work without big radiators, and I don't see them mentioned in the math?

Trails of those low orbit satellites wasn't bad enough.<p>Can't wait to see pictures of night sky ruined by... A data-center in the frame.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."<p>And so it began. The seed was sent into space. All going according to plan.

<i>> Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling.</i><p>You know what's even harder to cool?<p><i>> Orbital Data Centers</i>

Why?

The first M&A announcement I've seen in my entire life that includes a laughing emoji; maybe that's what it is!

I hope all the Tesla shareholders understand that they’re about to get hosed.<p>Musks making Tesla seem like a good fit into the portfolio.

Has SpaceX figured something out related to photonic chips that dramatically reduces waste heat generation of compute?

I hope SpaceX succeeds

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What's to stop president AOC from pulling the clearances of everyone working for SpaceX?

I think there is one more possible framing for this.<p>Recently xAI has been in the news for Groq's revenge-porn-like "undress them" feature, which seems pretty legally questionable.<p>Musk has also been in the news for his own Epstein-related activities.<p>If he can move Groq and X into space, well, there's not very many age-of-consent or revenge-porn laws in space as far as I know, so maybe he'll be able to do some sort of legal leverage where the space data-center can produce otherwise legally questionable AI responses with impunity.

I suspended my disbelief and gave it a chance but I couldn’t hold it anymore after the emoji.

call me crazy but if this isn't related to the AI stuff in military stuff nothing is. Anyone who believes spacex not that is naive

Banksters struggled to sell off Twitter notes. Did they get out intact finally?

This is how Musk is going to make good on his promise to pay back the original people that funded his Twitter purchase and offload that debt.<p>Twitter (X) was folded into xAI. Now xAI is folded into SpaceX. SpaceX will IPO (or be merged with Tesla) and those investors will be able to sell their shares - the debt is "gone", his benefactors make money, and retail investors pick up the short end of the stick.

> with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs<p>How is this possible?

Is he also talking about moving X's servers (since xAI owns X) into space?

SpaceX has jumped the shark.

Friendly reminder for anyone that forgot - xAI acquired Twitter, so now Space-X is the proud owner of a dying social media platform that they overpaid for.<p>Any claims that this is about putting compute in space is just a non-sense distraction. This was absolutely about bailing Elon out of his impulsive, drug-fueled Twitter purchase.<p>The only question now is: when they try to go public, will they be punished for wasting so much money or not? My guess is: not.

Makes about as much sense as Twitch buying Curse about.. a decade ago?

I swear Prof G mentioned this exact same thing happening today

This is terrible for Space-X. They're doing a great job. Musk has left running it to Gwynne Shotwell, who really is a rocket scientist. Now Space-X has a AI business unit they don't need, a new money drain, and more attention from Musk.<p>Should have merged xAI into Twitter. A failure there would not be a major setback.

They both have X in their names, just imagine the synergies!

Purely financial shenanigans. Nothing to see here, please move along.

Urgh... Elon is famous not for things he's done, but for saying things he is going to do. Do people still buy in to this? Elon Musk always promises things far in the future but doesn't make good on them. He hasn't succeeded in self driving cars. He is never going to mars. He is not solving the LA traffic problem with tunnels. His robots are the equivalent of the Metaverse. He's a phenomenal businessman, and understands that a story is part of that.

At least there will be AI and Agentic stuff in mars.

I'm sure the consummate professional(s), Shotwell and her team, are now delighted to be associated with xAI ... that stalwart of the CSAM community.

I thought this wasn't viable due to cooling requirements - how do you cool massive amounts of compute when the only option is to radiate it into space - nothing to convect it with?<p>Also, the incredible amount of grift here with the left hand paying the right is scarcely believable. Same story as Tesla buying Solarcity. Board of directors should be ashamed IMO.

I thought they were part of twitter

So they use a valid and valuable company to hide a giant dumpster fire company. To add to that, their best argument is "AI in space", which has some real "solar roadways" energy to it. I honestly don't know how any SpaceX shareholder could approve this.

So Elon has more shares when SpaceX IPOs?

Financial theatre

With my cynical hat on, this move is to protect xAI from any issues with Tesla having peaked, and to maximise the value in SpaceX ahead of its IPO.<p>I'd also question whether a species deserves a future in the cosmos when we can't even care for the people here on earth, especially when the person leading the charge thinks its ok to shut down USAID which according to published figures will result in millions of deaths of the worlds poorest people to hunger, AIDS, Malaria etc.<p>Tech bro psychopaths need to check themselves.

Pretty terrible for SpaceX. Of course they paid a crazy inflated price for xAI in an attempt to cash in on the IPO. This just devalues SpaceX and exposes the investors to all the AI bubble risk.

> SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform. This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!<p>I think Elon's taken one too many puffs of hopium

Perfect timing to offload that debt onto the bag— I mean shareholders.

The next step will be merging SpaceX and Tesla.<p>Tesla has probably the most valuable shareholders on Earth. Over years of empty promises and meme status, the stock has pretty much purged all the level heads. So it's mostly deluded Elon sycophants giving placing their tithe on the alter of his sci-fi fantasy smoke and mirrors game.<p>In reality he will be dumping the debt of twitter and xAI (and maybe spacex?) on Tesla shareholders, and buoying that with the added layer of hyper that spaceX brings.

We just had an X8.1 CME event, I just want to point out that at any moment we could have an x40 (we had a carrington event already in 1859) or higher event and all those sats at low earth orbit would be fried and start hitting each other, if SpaceX keeps launching more it becomes incredible probable that we might hit the Kessler Syndrome, and we would legit lose access to Space for a WHILE, including all of what satellites entail.<p>Are we ready for that as a modern society or are we going to start enacting regulation against it? I'm sorry but people wanting internet everywhere does not justify we going back to the dark ages for a decade or more.

Musk’s schtick lately has always been to find a challenging problem, point everyone to it and say “ I will solve it by September “, have the stock shoot up and make money. His first dis that with self driving, then twitter, then xAi, and now robots and data center in space. These last two will last him a decade as these are both challenging problems to solve over night.

Now he just needs to work in crypto satellites down to users via all the new phones supporting satellite link to SpaceX. I kinda expected that one first. Distributed payment network outside of government control/oversight seems like something he would be in to.

What kind of financial engineering is going on here? Is xAI about to go bankrupt or something?

I asked Gemini for a two word summary and it wrote "financial engineering"

Reminder that space only allows for radiative cooling (since there is no air to absorb heat) so data centers in space are going to have massive cooling panels.

In other words, he's cooking the books again.<p>People confuse being able to think big with being allowed to think big. With this much money loaned to him, protectionism and too many PR stunts, I don't think he delivered big enough, and he won't be able to at some point. This is madness.

Besides the obvious, why do engineers with real skills still work for this guy?

xAI owns Twitter... So now space company owns Twitter? Wtf

What about security?

The whole universe was supposed to be turned into paperclips, now it is being turned into graphics cards to produce images of barely legal girls on X.<p>And Musk keeps grifting about Kardashev 2 civilizations while his rockets do not even reach the moon.<p>If SpaceX goes public, that will rescue his xAi shares. I wonder how he will rescue his Tesla shares.

My question is how they'll update the hardware, if AI processors get outdated every 4-5 years? Or they will keep outdated satellites just for routing and Internet-related services?

Speculation - Starship is a dead end all of this is a play to inflate IPO prices for SpaceX during the AI bubble. Then cash out and start a new private space company?

It's a CONSTANT stream of new ideas with no payoff at this point.<p>Hyperloop > Neuralink > Self-Driving Cars > Robotaxi fleets > Personal Robots > Orbital Datacenters > [insert next vibe shift]<p>At what point do people start to see the ever-shifting goalposts for what they are?

Sorry but who buys this bullcrap? Sure you can take a tesla and drive it in your bedroom to use its AC, because you make teslas, but you could also use just a window attached AC?

Reminder that SpaceX has received an estimated $38 billion in government funding over the years, and all of its returns are going to a small set of private investors.<p>Socialized losses, privatized profits. As is the American way.

Anything to distract the people that he was on Epstein’s island

The Howard Hughes of our time. Soon enough he will start pissing in milk jugs.

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What if enemy or some anti-ai activities or etc attack it? How to protect it? It's just a too easy target.<p>It's just a dumbest idea ever if Elon truly believes it. I'm pretty sure he doesn't.

It's a scam. I don't understand how EVERYONE falls for Elon Musk's obvious scams, when every year his claims are more fantastical and exaggerated than the last.<p>This is obviously about propping up a shaky business (SpaceX) by making people believe that data centers in space are a solution. It's just riding the AI hype wave.<p>It's impossible to cool servers effectively in space, and, even though I'm skeptical, I'm more inclined to believe in a project to put them in the ocean than in space, simply because water conducts heat, unlike a vacuum.<p>Sure, there's a lot of room in space, but: - it will always take more energy to get into orbit than to install servers on Earth - the distance between the data center and us adds latency, which is not desirable for an LLM - the distance between the satellites themselves adds a huge amount of latency, making the data center less efficient<p>In a nutshell, there are physical problems that can never, ever be solved by science or technology, and even science fiction doesn't dare to invent scenarios this implausible. But then, coming from a pedophile who lied about his ties to Epstein, is it really surprising that he's lying and trying to divert attention right now.

Major grift vibes, inventing half-baked reasoning to justify massive valuations. If money wasnt so deeply entwined with politics at this point, this is the sort of news that would launch fraud investigations.

In other news, Kessler Syndrome: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ag6gSzsGbc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ag6gSzsGbc</a>

> the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform<p>What a joke.

Musk earns a $1tn payout when Tesla hits $8.5tn dollars.<p>I expect the next step in this series of moves is to turn Tesla into a SPAC & have it acquire SpaceX, bringing its valuation nearer that 8.5t.

Man the real story in a few decades is going to be whether SpaceX was onto such a kille business that it survived being used asma fiscal dumping ground for the losses being incurred by mismanagement everywhere else.

Two extreme grifting companies owned by the same asshole join dark forces with each other.<p>One hand pays the other.

Don't forget to opt out of SpaceX's product Starlink using your data to train AI: <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-wants-your-data-for-ai-model-training-how-to-opt-out" rel="nofollow">https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-wants-your-data-for-ai-m...</a>

From a technical point of view this doesn't make any sense.<p>From a finance and accounting point of view this makes everything more cloudy. Which certain types of people really like.

Terrible news for SpaceX.

xAI to cover X investors, SpaceX to cover xAI, us American public investors to cover SpaceX since it cannot go under for strategic reasons. Ultimate grift.

Cool!

What this tells me - xAI is essentially a failure, though at what level I'm not sure.

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The way I read it, X AI is not really profitable and Elon's creditors/coinvestors asked for something tangible for their money, a.k.a shares in SpaceX, his only business that still has some solid foundation. The rest is emois.

Discussion on previous speculation: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814701">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814701</a>

Wait so now SpaceX is the company letting you undress people? Why mix gold and poop? SpaceX plus xAI.

Musk always merges his companies when one is suffering:<p>Twitter/X in xAI<p>SolarCity into Tesla<p>xAI into SpaceC<p>I am just waiting now for Tesla to be acquired by SpaceC as it has run into issues.

Whenever Elon Musk says free speech, I get the chills.

What does Gwynne Shotwell think of this. She seemed level-headed, but is she also batshit insane now by osmosis?

Who got the money? Hahah

You can only form one bubble. If spacex IPOs and rockets, Tsla will go to $10.<p>We need more 'moonshot promisers' like Elon going public. Come on AGI people, come on immortality people

ah, good. another heap of "exaggerations" (lies) to investors so that the creditors don't take elon out back just yet. hooray.

“SpaceX is doing great but I want some of that AI investment money.”

When Elon Musk talks about benefiting humanity, remember that the one time he had unregulated power (DOGE) he used it mostly to cut benefits for poor people, and to push ideological agendas. His only agenda is self-aggrandizement, and this announcement is cover for passing the hot potato of Twitter debt around.

hmmmm

fool me once (Solar city) shame on you, fool me twice...

Can we at least agree this is an awesome thing to try?<p>Way more exciting than spending $70 billion on VR like Meta did when we all just wanted to play games.

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Elon Musk is a genius, but he’s a financing genius. Look at the long history he has of false promises supporting financing deals between his companies and you’ll see this for what it is, a cash injection and a lie to justify it. He did the same thing with a fake solar roof demo when Tesla bought the almost bankrupt Solar City. He also shifted resources from Tesla and SpaceX to support X in the early days. Even founding xAI outside of Tesla, when so much of its valuation was built on its AI capabilities, was questionable.

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All of these Musk lead 'X' companies, buy each other, invest in each other, then sell each other to each other, and re-buy.<p>Are we sure this isn't some Ponzi skeem?<p>Is Musk just using purchasing of his own companies as way to inflate them?

When does the market realize this is all just a shell game and the emperor really has no clothes?<p>We saw this on a much smalelr scale a decade ago when one of Elon's companies (Tesla) acquired a second one of Elon's companies (SolarCity) because it was broke and owed a ton of money to a third one of Elon's companies (SpaceX).<p>Elon was forced to go through with his impulsive Twitter acquisition by a Delaware court, an acquisition that was not only secured by a bunch of Tesla stock but also a bunch of Qatari and Saudi royal money. He then mismanaged Twitter so badly Fidelity wrote down its value by at least 80% [1].<p>So what did Elon do? Raised even more questionable foreign money into xAI, diverted GPUs intended for another of his companies (Tesla) into Twitter and then "merged" Twitter into xAI, effectively using other people's money to bail him out from an inevitable margin call on his Tesla stock.<p>Interestingly, Twitter was reportedly valued at $33 billion in this deal [2], significantly more than the less than $10 billion Fidelity valued Twitter at. Weird, huh? With a competent government, this would be securities fraud that would have you spend the rest of your life in jail. And even with all that, $11 billion was lost on the deal.<p>So here we are and it's time for the shell game to be played again. Now it's SpaceX's turn to bail out the xAI investors.<p>And what is the argument for all this? AI data centers in space. Words cannot describe how little sense this makes. Launch costs (even if the Starship launch costs get to their rosy projections), cooling in space, cosmic rays (and the resulting errors) and maintenance. Servers constantly need parts replaced. You can just deorbit the satellite instead but that seems like an expensive way of dealing with a bad SSD or RAM chip.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-twitter-x-fidelity" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-twitter-x-...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/elon-musk-says-xai-has-acquired-x-in-deal-that-values-social-media-site-at-33-billion.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/elon-musk-says-xai-has-acqui...</a>

Making a "sentient sun" is the most bald-faced asinine, drug-induced nonsense that should be the complete destruction of all credibility to anyone who said it or typed it or works for anything here.

Financial engineering. Twitter under Elon became a dumpster fire of porn and hate and big banks were holding 13B in bonds that wouldn’t be worth the paper they were printed on for the company alone so he just links it with his only company that actually is doing something worthwhile…<p>Not sure how X which “merged” wit X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX really matter or synergize but here we are. It’s all about the money being protected. And this Ketamine using wierdo is gonna be the worlds first trillionaire. Yay all of us.

Ahahaha, who got the money?

> By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will transform our ability to scale compute. It’s always sunny in space! Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization, one that can harness the Sun’s full power, while supporting AI-driven applications for billions of people today and ensuring humanity’s multi-planetary future.<p>Apparently optimus robots don't work and he needs to start his final grift, space datacenters, while his datacenters on earth are powered by gas turbines.<p>Most likely he's just trying to bury his epstein involvement where was exposed lying by his own daughter.

What a torrent of nonsense.<p>* Starship so far can't put as much tonnage in orbit as New Glenn or several other more conventional rockets. Putting "megatons" of hardware in orbit is an <i>entirely unsolved problem</i>.<p>* the ISS currently carries 250kW of solar panel and 70kW of radiators. <i>Cooling vast amounts of hardware in orbit</i> is ever more an unsolved problem than putting it up there.<p>Sheesh. I'm so tired of this bullshit.

knowing elon, he will make this actually work, thus fully vindicating both the financial engineering <i>and</i> his arrogance!

As a fan of space this makes me sad. AI Datacenters are complete nonsense. And binding all of this stuff SpaceX is idiotic. SpaceX could do so many great things for space and now its all messed up in the AI race.

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Now those dumb articles about AI data centers in space from a couple months back make so much more sense.

Disgusting.

Can someone convince me that this is not a) pure horseshit b) a plan for Elon to sneak enough mass into orbit to hold the Earth hostage? If you can bring millions of tons of anything into orbit around Earth you can destroy civilization, or just France.

> This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!<p>One of the dumbest things I've ever read.

Musk: "What do we have that OpenAi doesn't have?"<p>Musk aide while high: "sPaCe"<p>Slightly less high Musk aide: "But what is the synergy, where's the moat and how could that be done in practice and most importantly is there any limiting factor on Earth before we have to bring AI into.."<p>Musk : "SPACE!!!!!!"<p>It is incredible to think that the extremes of the stock market are actually pretty similar, pink sheets/cryptos and these mega companies are actually the same. News fueled pumps and dumps to win the cycle of hype of the week

Going to be marked at some delusional valuation and at IPO retail bag holders are going to get absolutely massacred.

For anyone too busy to go through all comments.<p>The overall sentiment of the discussion is *overwhelmingly skeptical and critical*. While a small minority of users defend Elon Musk’s track record of defying critics (citing reusable rockets and EVs), the vast majority view the "AI datacenters in space" proposal as scientifically unsound and economically nonsensical. Most commenters interpret the merger as a form of "financial engineering" designed to bail out underperforming assets (Twitter/X and xAI) using SpaceX's valuation ahead of a potential IPO.<p>---<p>### *Category 1: Technical Feasibility (Thermodynamics & Environment)*<p>The most robust debate focused on the physics of operating high-density compute in space.<p>* *The Cooling Problem:<p>* Numerous engineers pointed out that space is a vacuum and therefore an excellent insulator. While solar panels generate power, getting rid of waste heat from GPUs requires radiative cooling, which is inefficient compared to terrestrial convection (air/water). Users estimated that the radiator surface area required would be massive and structurally prohibitive.<p>* *Radiation & Durability:* Commenters noted that cosmic rays cause bit-flips and degrade electronics. Terrestrial hardware (like standard GPUs) would not survive long without heavy, expensive shielding, or would require "space-grade" hardening that lags generations behind in performance.<p>* *Maintenance:* On Earth, failed components are swapped; in space, a failed GPU or drive effectively bricks the unit or turns it into space junk.<p>* *Latency:* While Low Earth Orbit (LEO) offers better latency than Geostationary orbit, users questioned the utility of high-latency inference compared to fiber-connected terrestrial centers, particularly for complex AI tasks.<p>### *Category 2: Financial Engineering & Corporate Governance*<p>A significant portion of the thread analyzed the merger as a financial maneuver rather than a technological necessity.<p>* *The "Bailout" Theory:* Users widely believe this deal is designed to offload the heavy debt and losses from the Twitter (X) acquisition and the high burn rate of xAI onto SpaceX, which is viewed as Musk's most solvent and valuable company.<p>* *SolarCity Parallel:* Many compared this to Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity—a move previously criticized as a bailout of a failing Musk-owned company by a successful one.<p>* *IPO Preparation:* Speculation suggests this is a play to juice the valuation of a SpaceX IPO by attaching "AI hype" to it, allowing early investors in the struggling X/xAI entities to cash out or convert their equity into SpaceX stock.<p>* *Conflict of Interest:* Commenters questioned the governance of private companies where one individual (Musk) controls the board and directs mergers that may benefit him personally at the expense of specific shareholder groups (e.g., SpaceX employees or investors).<p>### *Category 3: Economic Viability*<p>Users attacked the business logic of launching datacenters into orbit.<p>* *Cost of Launch vs. Land:* Even with the cost reductions promised by Starship, users argued that land and grid connections on Earth are orders of magnitude cheaper than rocketry.<p>* *Solar Efficiency:* While solar is more efficient in space (no night/clouds in specific orbits), users argued it is still cheaper to simply build <i>more</i> solar panels on Earth and use batteries than to launch infrastructure into orbit.<p>* *The "Million Ton" Claim:* Users crunched the numbers on Musk’s claim of launching "a million tons" of satellites, noting it would require an unrealistic flight cadence (e.g., launching massive rockets every few hours continuously).<p>### *Category 4: Musk's Reputation & Rhetoric*<p>The thread discussed Elon Musk’s history of promises versus delivery.<p>* *Skepticism:* Users cited a long list of missed timelines and unfulfilled promises (Hyperloop, Full Self-Driving by 2017, Robotaxis, Mars landings) as reasons to doubt the "space datacenter" timeline of 2–3 years.<p>* *Mockery of Language:* There was specific ridicule regarding the press release language, particularly the phrase "scaling to make a sentient sun," which many found to be "drug-induced nonsense" or "cultish."<p>* *The Defense:* A minority of commenters argued that betting against Musk has historically been a bad idea, citing the success of Falcon 9 and Starlink as proof that he can solve "impossible" engineering problems.<p>### *Category 5: Regulatory, Legal, & Ethical Concerns*<p>* *Jurisdiction Shopping:* Some speculated that moving AI to space might be an attempt to bypass terrestrial regulations regarding copyright, safety, or content generation (specifically referencing Grok’s lack of guardrails regarding CSAM/deepfakes).<p>* *National Security:* Concerns were raised that SpaceX is a critical US defense contractor, and merging it with a "chaotic" social media company and an AI firm introduces unnecessary risk and leverage over the US government.<p>* *Orbital Debris (Kessler Syndrome):* Users worried that launching millions of tons of disposable datacenter satellites would clutter low earth orbit, increasing collision risks and potentially locking humanity out of space travel.<p>### *Category 6: The "Why" (Strategic Speculation)*<p>* *Energy Arbitrage:* A few users attempted to steelman the argument, suggesting that if Earth's energy grid becomes the primary bottleneck for AI, space offers the only unconstrained solar power source, despite the cooling difficulties.<p>* *Vertical Integration:* Some noted this creates a conglomerate similar to Samsung or aggressive Japanese <i>keiretsu</i>, where the goal is total vertical integration of energy, transport, communication, and intelligence.

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<a href="https://x.ai/news/xai-joins-spacex" rel="nofollow">https://x.ai/news/xai-joins-spacex</a> wrong link?

Well surely this acquisition is above board. Nothing funny going on here, just good old business as usual.

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I'm sure these comments will be rational and non-biased by political emotions /s

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wow this is one of the most incredibly fraudulent things that ever happened in American capitalism and I'm not ignoring Enron or the mortgage meltdown. I'm speechless the US has given up on any semblance of law and order in matter of financial markets and this stuff can happen without people going to jail.

This means that Grok, Elon's politically labotomized involuntary pornography generator, and X (formerly Twitter), Elon's Nazi-adjacent propaganda machine, are now completely intertwined with SpaceX, a too-big-to-fail government contractor that currently serves as America's only reliable option for manned orbital spaceflight.<p>Anyone who doesn't see how broken this situation is isn't paying attention. This is how people like Elon, who want to seize as much power from the government as they can, ensure that the means for seizing that power are untouchable.<p>Anyone who has ever used Grok or X lately knows that both of these products are heavily manipulated to align with the political, social, and economic views of Elon Musk, who is increasingly boosting "white power" language and full-throatedly backing America's most nationalistic and authoritarian president to date.<p>This is just another consolidation of power, and it's deeply worrisome. Any integrity one may have hoped remained at SpaceX just vanished when they aligned their mission with that of these deeply problematic digital services.<p>And this is not even scratching the surface of what looks like a deliberate attempt to create Kessler syndrome by launching millions of cheap short-term satellites into orbit, or the rationality of putting datacenters into orbit in the first place...

I know that per HN's guidelines we're supposed to be "kind and curious", and "reply to the argument instead of calling names". But with some texts, engaging with individual arguments loses sight of the more important bigger picture. So while unkind, the most "thoughtful and substantive" thing I think can be said about this text is:<p>The man's a moron.

This makes a lot of sense. The commercial launch business is not large enough to support all possible Falcon launches, so Starlink was created to take advantage of the low launch cost and vertical integration and is now a major profit center for SpaceX.<p>Starship launches are only going to make sense every 779.94 days (the approx 2 year Mars-Earth proximity). The rest of the time, the launches could similarly be used to deploy orbiting data centers for XAi/Grok etc. Brilliant move.

People pooh-poohing space datacenters will obviously think this is a bad move. But Elon clearly believes space datacenters will work. Given that, and the fact that SpaceX will IPO this year, this acquisition was inevitable.<p>SpaceX and xAI would not be able to freely collaborate on space datacenters after the IPO because it would be self-dealing. SpaceX likes to be vertically integrated, so they wouldn't want to just be a contractor for OpenAI's or Anthropic's infrastructure. Merging before the IPO is the only way that SpaceX could remain vertically integrated as they build space datacenters.