SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.
Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.
The company's founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company's plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company's numbers about the satellite's size and power capabilities.
SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.
Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.
The company's founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company's plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company's numbers about the satellite's size and power capabilities.
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NASA unveiled plans in March to develop a lunar base as part of its “Ignition” event that outlined the agency’s new direction in human spaceflight. The plans, though, were rather […]
Author(s): Niayesh Afshordi, Phil Halper, Matteo Rini, and Michael Schirber
One of the largest physics surveys ever conducted finds respondents divided on most topics. Surprisingly, some “textbook” answers only racked up a minority of votes.
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