this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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411
Elon Musk Is Rolling xAI Into SpaceX—Creating the World’s Most Valuable Private Company (www.wired.com)
submitted 2 days ago by some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
200 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

In a blog post, Musk said the acquisition was warranted because global electricity demand for AI cannot be met with “terrestrial solutions,” and Silicon Valley will soon need to build data centers in space to power its AI ambitions.

This dumb fuck. Unfortunately, his boosters will be all-in on this messaging. Whatever.

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[–] swicano@programming.dev 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You don't use 48 kW you have 48kW capacity, that'd be 33 (1500W) electric space heaters running nonstop 24/7. I have electric heat, electric oven/range, and an electric car and I averaged 3 kW across the last week. (406 kWh between the 26th and 1st)

A comparison that is reasonable is an h100 rack cluster like this which uses about 60 kW per rack. For input power, the newer iROSA solar panels generate about 20 kW at a size of 20ft x 60ft each. Throw in 4 of those radiators, and you have something that is feasible to throw into space. Again, I can't judge the economics of launching and running a space based datacenter business, but you could absolutely launch and operate a space rack with current tech.

[–] RamRabbit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

The ISS is one of the most expensive pieces of infrastructure humanity has built, it costs something on the order of $150B. My home I personally paid for, out of my own pocket, and it has 3x the power power supply of the ISS.

How about this. You give me 10% of the cost of the ISS and that datacenter rack, and I'll use the $15,000,000,000 to buy a big AC system to cool the rack. We both make out. You paid 10x less and got 3x as much power capacity, and I got FIFTEEN BILLION DOLLARS to service and maintain a residential sized power line.

you could absolutely launch and operate a space rack with current tech

If you aren't getting what I'm laying down. The issue isn't the technology, the issue is the many orders of magnitude of extra cost.