Thread | Brutkey

New FCC filing by SpaceX for constellation of million data center satellites for AI apps.

# of sats: up to 1 million!
Orbit: 500 km and 2,000 km altitude and 30°inclinations. Multiple orbital shells 50 km apart.
Cooling: radiative
Schedule: unspecified
Sat size, weight, power, cost, ..: unspecified
Launches: millions of tons of mass per year

There goes the neighborhood.
Or is this just marketing fluff and orbital hoarding?

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
https://www.scribd.com/document/990116826/Orbital-Data-Center-LOA-Narrative
https://fccprod.servicenowservices.com/icfs?id=ibfs_application_summary&number=SAT-LOA-20260108-00016
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Image of the first page of the filing -

SpaceX requests authority to launch and operate a constellation of satellites with unprecedented computing capacity to power advanced artificial intelligence (“AI”) models and the applications that rely on them. By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will achieve transformative cost and energy efficiency while significantly reducing the environmental impact associated with terrestrial data centers. 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 amongst the stars

SpaceX is designing its satellite system to accommodate the explosive growth of data demands driven by AI, machine learning, and edge omputing, where processing needs are already beginning to outpace terrestrial capabilities. To deliver the compute capacity required for large-
scale AI inference and data center applications serving billions of users globally, SpaceX aims to deploy a system of up to one million satellites to operate within narrow orbital shells spanning up to 50 km each (leaving sufficient room to deconflict against other systems with comparable ambitions). This system will operate between 500 km and 2,000 km altitude ...

AkaSci 🛰

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@AkaSci@fosstodon.org

To keep the clueless masses intoxicated, SpaceX threw in these flowery words in the FCC filing -

"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 amongst the stars."

Earth must be destroyed to save it?

https://www.scribd.com/document/990116826/Orbital-Data-Center-LOA-Narrative
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Tweet from Elon Musk @elonmusk
That’s my favorite part

with embedde tweet by Aaron Burnett @aaronburnett
is this the first time Kardashev II-level civilization has been used in an FCC filing?

AkaSci 🛰

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@AkaSci@fosstodon.org

The filing is short on details and long on lofty goals and promises.

And also a bit sloppy -
"Global electricity demand for data centers is projected to more than double by 2035 driven by growth in AI — reaching ~1,200-1,700 Terawatt hours and ..."

You gotta specify TW or TW-hours per month or per year.

Also, I suspect the million satellite number comes from 1 million * 100 kw = 100 GW total power.

For comparison, Starlink v3 satellites will generate 20 kW with a 60x8 m array.

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AkaSci 🛰

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@AkaSci@fosstodon.org

A blunt assessment of "AI datacenters in space” by Prof. Matthew Buckley in Dec 2025 -

"To be blunt, the entire stupid idea is a giant middle finger to multiple fundamentals of physics, and the fact that it is apparently being taken seriously by our tech lords, mainstream journalism, and political leaders is a damning indictment of not just the ridiculous amount of money chasing bad ideas in the tech/LLM/hype sector that has eaten the American economy, ..."

https://www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2025/12/11/the-dumbest-thing-ive-seen-this-week
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Image of the top of the article -

The Dumbest Thing I’ve Seen This Week
December 11, 2025

Given that it is 2025, the dumbest thing I’ve seen this week is some stiff competition, but “AI datacenters in space” is some impressive idiocy. I’ve seen a few breathless media reports on how AI companies are planning to launch entire datacenters into space. Some of these articles point to a single H100 GPU that was used to train a LLM while in orbit. Obviously, humanity has the capacity to launch a single GPU into orbit, and small LLMs can be trained on an H100. However, that’s a far cry from a datacenter, and so it is somewhat surprising that this is being hyped by companies who are selling the idea of massive datacenters in orbit.

To be blunt, the entire stupid idea is a giant middle finger to multiple fundamentals of physics, and the fact that it is apparently being taken seriously by our tech lords, mainstream journalism, and political leaders is a damning indictment of not just the ridiculous amount of money chasing bad ideas in the tech/LLM/hype sector that has eaten the American economy, political power centers, and people who really should know better, but yet another demonstration of how people who built their economic empire on a claim of STEM-based rigor and quantitative genius either can’t do basic physics or know that no one out there who matters is going to call them on it.

AkaSci 🛰

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@AkaSci@fosstodon.org

Another good article by a former NASA engineer/scientist on why "Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea."

"This is an absolutely terrible idea, and really makes zero sense whatsoever. There are multiple reasons for this, but they all amount to saying that the kind of electronics needed to make a datacenter work, particularly a datacenter deploying AI capacity in the form of GPUs and TPUs, is exactly the opposite of what works in space."

https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/
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