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Sam Altman and Elon Musk traded barbed social media posts over the weekend, drawing new attention to the gap between vision and reality for the space compute business. <\/p>\n
Responding to Musk accusing him<\/a> of being a scammer, Altman said<\/a>, \u201chomeboy you\u2019re the one sellling [sic] public market investors on short-term space datacenters.\u201d<\/p>\n Setting aside \u201chomeboy,\u201d Altman is saying what a lot of experts have concluded but public market investors seem to be ignoring: Space data centers are not going to be a serious business anytime soon.<\/p>\n SpaceX\u2019s plans to launch a fleet of orbital data centers to perform AI inference tasks are the main driver <\/a>behind the company\u2019s two-trillion-dollar valuation. Bullish analysts say that the potential for that processing power to fuel SpaceXAI\u2019s models or act as an orbital neocloud are unprecedented in the AI boom.<\/p>\n But when you talk to subject-matter experts \u2014 whether it\u2019s the entrepreneurs<\/a> behind<\/a> other space data center start-ups, the team at Google<\/a> developing that company\u2019s orbital compute project, or engineers who have done the numbers<\/a> for fun \u2014 you find the same answer: This isn\u2019t going to make a big dent until we have much cheaper rockets and the ability to produce high-powered satellites at low cost, en masse.<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s answer to this is easy to predict: Starship, SpaceX\u2019s huge new rocket, is expected to make its thirteenth test flight as soon as July 16. If Musk\u2019s team can get that vehicle to the point where it flies again and again, the data center business case could close. <\/p>\n But even if the company successfully recovers both stages of the rocket on this test flight, operational reusable flight will still likely be years away, and space data center launches will likely take a back seat to SpaceX\u2019s commitments to NASA and to building out its own Starlink network. <\/p>\n SpaceX also conceded during its IPO road show that Starship may not be fully reusable<\/a> in the near-term and will need to throw each of its second stages during each launch, which would put a kibosh on economical space data centers. <\/p>\n That\u2019s why Musk\u2019s rejoinder<\/a>\u2014\u201dwe start flying them next year\u201d\u2014falls a bit flat. There\u2019s no doubt that SpaceX could launch a satellite equipped for high-speed data processing next year, but the big question is when it will be able to launch and manufacture them at scale. And that\u2019s likely a question for the 2030s. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n