Solar power? I don’t know, sounds kinda woke.

Because the FCC has jurisdiction over all of space around our globe?

It is about damn time something is being done about the amount of crap that is being launched into orbit.

Sun power for data centers? How do they transfer generated energy? Or are satellites themselves data centers? :P

Scott Manley has a video on this:
https://youtu.be/DCto6UkBJoI

My takeaway is that it isn’t unfeasible. We already have satellites that do a couple kilowatts, so a cluster of them might make sense. In isolation, it makes sense.
But there is launch cost, and the fact that de-orbiting/de-commissioning is a write-off, and the fact that preferred orbits (lots of sun) will very quickly become unavailable.
So there is kinda a graph where you get the preferred orbit, your efficiency is good enough, your launch costs are low enough.
But it’s junk.
It’s literally investing in junk.
There is no way this is a legitimate investment.

It has a finite life, regardless of how you stretch your tech. At some point, it can’t stay in orbit.
It’s AI. There is no way humans are in a position to lock in 4 years of hardware.
It’s satellites. There are so many factors outside of our control that (beyond launch orbit success), that there is a massive failure rate.
It’s rockets. They are controlled explosives with 1 shot to get it right. Again, massive failure rate.

It just doesn’t make sense.
It’s feasible. I’m sure humanity would learn a lot. AI is not a good use of kilowatts of power in space. AI is not a good use of the finite resource of earth to launch satellites (never mind a million?!). AI is not a good reason to pullute the “good” bits of LEO

This administration is only going to approve these satellites if they are powered by coal.

Or if you give them a big fat bribe, either one will suffice.

on par for musk. spew out an idea that sounds revolutionary to those who are less tech literate when in reality it’s just another con to pump a stock and produce junk

This idiot can’t even figure out self-driving cars, but we’re supposed to trust him to point microwaves at the Earth’s surface? All so that he can power a technology that no one wants or needs?

Fuck this timeline.

Lol, either these won’t be able to cool themselves or they will pump out heat straight into the upper atmosphere, which seems like a bad idea (I honestly don’t know enough but I suspect we simply don’t have the data to know what long term negative effects it will have)

Also just like Starlink this is a really dumb way to solve any problem other than how to inflate SpaceX valuations.

Now the lie that Starlink is resistant to censorship has been exposed twice (Ukraine & Iran), this is just the test Elon Grift.

While to that apartheid bastard seem to be a wonderful idea of having data away from the prying hands of world governments, as they try replicating cyberpunk sci-fi concept of placing stateless corporate data havens in orbit, current limitations of technology, bad space weather which could fry pricey circuits and worrying problems with space debris makes such a concept less feasible.

I wonder at which point the amount of satellites in orbit would begin to measurably reduce the incident solar radiation on the surface. If we could block out the sun to cool the earth and capture that energy at the same time to do useful work, that’d be pretty cool.

But this would probably just go to powering orbital datacenters running Grok, so we’re fucked anyway.

As if SpaceX could actually do that

I would like to say unlikely, because we have a relatively small orbit band that has 100% sun exposure and this is just a stunt of Musk to foster SpaceX. But with the current administration, who knows.

Not a space expert but in v1.5 isn’t the center of mass being unaligned with the center of drag going to cause issues over time?

UHH how about no. Elon is on the fucking Epstein lists. Mark my words but this is somehow a part of Israel’s agenda to take over the world and control everybody under facism.