Starlink · Nvidia · SpaceX · Elon Musk · FCC · IEEE Spectrum AI
Both the launch cadences and satellite-manufacturing capacity would have to scale up astronomically to deploy a million orbital
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For context, there have been roughly 7,000 orbital launches in all of human history.
Key facts
- As Cavalier shows, cooling even a single Nvidia H100 GPU in space is difficult: It draws 700 watts, which will require 1.4 square meters of radiator at 60 °C
- Later that month, SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission for an orbital data center constellation of up to 1 million satellites in low Earth orbit, 500 to 2,000
- Considering that SpaceX launched a record 165 orbital missions in 2025, even at 10 times that cadence, it would take a decade
- A 40-kilowatt rack of servers will need an 80-m² radiator; a 100-megawatt data center will require 2,500 of those radiators
Summary
“ The lowest-cost place to put AI will be in space, and that will be true within two years, maybe three at the latest,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk told the World Economic Forum in Davos this past January, as his company was preparing to go public. Later that month, SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission for an orbital data center constellation of up to 1 million satellites in low Earth orbit, 500 to 2,000 kilometers above Earth. Musk is prone to hyperbole when it comes to timelines. First human mission to Mars in 2024. Consider this: There are roughly 14,500 active satellites in orbit. Considering that SpaceX launched a record 165 orbital missions in 2025, even at 10 times that cadence, it would take a decade.