Comment by pavlov
9 hours ago
2-3x sounds like a very low estimate.
There’s so much data center capacity being built all over the Earth. Thousands of large projects across US / China / Europe / Middle East. It would be astonishing if something that’s never been done before could be so cost-competitive immediately.
Starlink wasn’t the first time LEO communications constellations were attempted. Multiple 1990s projects did it (Iridium, GlobalStar…) and went bankrupt.
It took 30 years to make the concept work. SpaceX investors seem to be assuming the space data center business will be immediately viable.
SemiAnalysis' report on orbital data centers estimated 4x terrestrial costs in 2026, then parity around ~2040.
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/to-boldly-go-the-case-...
Based on very specific assumptions: “…the world in which AI demand is so overwhelming as to exceed the already formidable datacenter capacity additions” — but also this same world is one where GPU chip supply is abundant, there just isn’t enough data centers to put them in.
This does not seem like the likeliest scenario to me.
Agreed, how could we not have datacenter capacity for the GPUs when Meta has shown that you can go from a bare field to an operational datacenter in about 3 months by using tents instead of buildings?
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