this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2026
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As much as I dislike Musk, he probably could tell you in detail. His company is not the only one looking into compute in space, either.
Nah, it's a grift. The Melon's pitch straight up includes factually wrong physics claims. It is not easier, nor cheaper, to have data centers in space.
Actual scientists have done the math. Even disregarding maintenance for data corruption from radiation, and assuming the best near future tech. It would take 10 times an ISS equivalent structure to power and cool down a single server rack.
Musk promised he wants to get 1 Tera Watt of LLM processing power in orbit. That's 10,000 times an ISS of solar panels and IR radiators for cooling. The enterprise is completely unrealistic.
The whole thing is just a con to get governments to funnel more money into his companies without having to deliver any actual results.
Yeah, other CEOs also fail basic physics.
Almost like Musk had to buy his physics diploma, eh?
And every single one of them is a grifter. It would be a lot easier to establish a permanent moon settlement (which can then build datacenters if they want to) than to provide meaningful amounts of compute in orbit.
there's no convection cooling in space, because vacuum is a very good thermal insulator. compute in space does not scale because of that alone. you would need massive (F/M)IR radiator arrays to get rid of the thermal energy.