🛰️ AI data centers in space are no joke

If SpaceX’s Starship works as intended, cheap access to orbit could turn a sci-fi idea into real digital infrastructure for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:

Perhaps the main upside to SpaceX from going public next month is access to gobs more capital—as much as $75 billion—to accelerate all of Elon Musk’s off-planet dreams. For me, personally, the main upside of this largest-ever IPO (perhaps as high as $2 trillion) will be greater focus on SpaceX from Wall Street. That should mean lots more transparency for what’s potentially the most important company in human history. I’m especially eager for more insight into Starship, with the bigger, more capable V3 due for its debut launch as soon as this Tuesday.

A recent Barron’s article referred to Starship as SpaceX’s “ace in the hole.” But that might understate the importance of this ginormous rocket.¹ Every business SpaceX wants to build—expanded Starlink coverage, Moon and Mars colonization, space-based computing (more on that later)—depends on dramatically cheaper and more frequent access to orbit and beyond.

The key here, of course, is full reusability of both stages, something no operational rocket yet delivers. The workhorse (more than 600 launches) Falcon 9’s partial reusability was transformative. Starship’s complete reusability, if achieved, would be more so. The former cut the cost of reaching orbit by roughly ninety-five percent compared with the Space Shuttle. The latter is designed to cut it by a further ninety percent, if not even more eventually.

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Everything’s computer, even in orbit

But space enthusiasts and potential investors aren’t the only folks thinking hard about Starship these days. While the rocket may be central to dreams of humanity someday becoming a multiplanetary civilization, it might also be central to humanity becoming an AI-empowered civilization.