“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'.
Is SpaceX hitching America's space efforts to the AI bubble? SpaceX & xAI are merging as apparently 1,000,000 satellites in space is the only way to power future data centers – but China deployed twice that amount of grid storage batteries here on Earth in just one month in December 2025.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
10 Comments
There are no datacenters in space. There’s no way to properly cool them, existing solar panels can’t generate the power required, there’s no way to service them, the connections to the ground or other arrays isn’t fast enough. The problems just pile onto themselves. This whole merger feels like a scam to get the tax payer on the hook ehen the “AI” bubble inevitably collapses.
Who ever the tv/phone/radio/magazine/newspaper etc. tells me is my enemy. Than I know the opposite is true.
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This should scare everyone. There’s no need to merge these companies unless one needs the other. Does spacex need its own ai? Or does the ai need to hitch to spacex to stay afloat?
One is battery other is solar panel. One is energy storage other is energy production.
Also even if it was true, AI is not a bubble, and even if that was also true, merger of xAI and SpaceX is not going to destroy US space program.
It’s just a load of nonsense to boost the stock price so Elon can cash in at IPO, simple as that. If there is one thing he is good at it’s manipulating stock prices.
Similar to Tesla the core product is good but the valuation is unlikely to be backed by financial sense. Also like Tesla competition will come and profits will fall.
People seem to forgot that xAI officially merged with X (formerly Twitter) on March 28, So Twitter is now part of a rocket / satellite company.
This is just a scam for one guy to become a trillionaire. Data centers in space is not going to happen. Its a total joke that the idea is even being entertained and if investors fall for this racket, they deserve to lose their money
It’s weird how dead set people are on an AI bubble.
Elon was eager to party on Epstein’s island.
He’s a homophobe, racist/Nazi, PDF, and about to be a trillionaire. If that doesn’t tell you we live in an extremely fkd up and morally corrupt world nothing will.