“Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling,” Musk wrote. “Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment.”
Something is not adding up here.
25 kW is an upper-end ballpark for the output of large satellite solar panels, so 25GW is a proxy for the output of 1,000,000 satellites. China installs that amount of solar on a monthly basis these days & in December installed twice that amount of grid storage batteries. SpaceX's larger satellites are costing about $1 million to manufacture these days (so without launch costs), that's $1 trillion dollars. I don't know how much China is spending on its solar & batteries every month, but I'd guess, at most, it's 2-3% of that.
With SpaceX due to launch an IPO, this sounds like another AI bubble in the (attempted) making, but now with NASA downgraded, it's the US's main space launch capacity hitched along for the ride.
This should concern taxpayers, as if/when the AI-bubble bursts, it will present the US space program with two terrible choices - a SpaceX that has failed, or perhaps worse, that is 'too-big-to-fail'.
SpaceX acquires xAI in bid to develop orbital data centers
So this is the end of space exploration and science in the states isn't it?
They butchered NASA to basically replace it with SpaceX, and now he's going to combine it with a failing company that will kill both. Nothing will be left and clawing back funding to bring NASA back will be close to impossible.