this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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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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[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 1 points 27 minutes ago

So he decided to ruin his one successful company. Which is successful because he wasn't involved in running it until now.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

"...creating the worlds most overvalued private company."

FTFY.

I'm not really convinced SpaceX was over valued IF Starship succeeds, but every single part of xAi was.

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

A million satellites he says. That's 100 satellites per starship launch. 5 times per day, every day, for five years. By the time you're done, the first ones are burned out and you have to do it all again. And that's assuming one GPU per satellite because solar panels even in space can't pull enough power to feed multiple of those hungry things.

[–] Iseja@lemmy.world 1 points 33 minutes ago (1 children)

Energy is the least of their concerns, getting rid of the heat is a much bigger problem.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 minutes ago

But space is cold

Space is the worst place for high powered servers because of all the heat involved along with the inability to perform maintenance. It's just a grift, it will not be profitable to put HPC GPUs in orbit.

[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Financial trickery is what this is. Rolling one failing business into the next, Tesla will follow soon. It's incredible that this is even legal, but of course nothing matters anymore in Trump's America.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

The stupid thing is that it‘s perfectly legal as long as nobody looks into it and because it‘s a US corporation nobody will look into it.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Time to break it up because it‘s a monopoly that spans over several industries for no good reason at all but oh wait the USA is a dysfunctional mess so nothing will be done about it.

[–] Herr_S_aus_H@lemmy.zip 0 points 31 minutes ago

How little of an understanding of how the natural world works do you need to have to think that data centers in space are a good idea? Nothing to say of economics and logistics. Or am I missing something big here?

[–] Hayduke@lemmy.world 14 points 3 hours ago

You mean that guy who desperately tried to invite himself to an island to rape kids, but was deemed too big of a weirdo and jackass?

Yeah cool, go AI rockets or whatever.

I guess do feel bad for the innovators and engineers that are doing actual cool shit in his companies. Must suck to be downstream of that shithead. So much potential, so much stigma (for the company, not the pedo fuckhead)

[–] verdi@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 1 points 1 hour ago

Noice, the US already subsidises spaceX just like uber with subsidised rides, time to further subsidise spaceX. 

A brief look at fundamentals sbows reusable rockets make no financial sense. This guy's continuous scam of the entirety of humanity is solid proof the overwhelming majority of us are fucking idiots. 

[–] manxu@piefed.social 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)
xAI business model: hype  
SpaceX business model: government contracts  

The contracts stay when the hype dies. By merging the two companies, Musk avoids the collapse of one. To make this work, he needs more government contracts - I see a lot of groveling and boot licking in his immediate future.

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 1 points 29 minutes ago

This capitalism looks and smells a lot like good old USSR style communism.

[–] BioDriver@lemmy.world 45 points 5 hours ago

Someone needed a distraction from his name appearing all over the Epstein files

[–] bagsy@lemmy.world 18 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

hopefully his shitty AI will tank his nazi rockets. one can only hope.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 18 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (3 children)

It kind of sucks because the people working at spaceX are actually doing great things as a whole.

Just sucks a person like muskrat is the face of it.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

The people at SpaceX are poisoning landscapes that used to be neighborhoods with toxic waste because the company doesn‘t give a shit about the environment, people or the planet. Fuck whoever works at SpaceX and partakes in this. Oh, they‘re also making Musk even more powerful so that‘s a double L.

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Agreed. I just got banned from techtakes for pointing this out but the Falcon 9 rocket is the most reliable launch vehicle today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems

[–] rwdf@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago (5 children)

They should work for NASA instead.

[–] MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 hours ago

NASA has contracted out basically all their rockets. We need spacex. Elon needs to be in jail. If only for threatening national security with this dumb move. Never mind being a Nazi and election interference.

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[–] BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz 21 points 4 hours ago

We NEED Datacenters in SPACE so we can Make Better CHILD PORN with GROK!

[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

It's notoriously difficult to cool things in space. This'll be fun...

[–] Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

Or...he just tanked the value of both.

[–] frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Doesn't one of those companies rely on government contracts? And now that company generates CSAM on demand?

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

Government contracts used to be their biggest revenue source, but it's Starlink now.

They still need the profits from government contracts though to help fund the capital expenditures to try and get starship working, but they aren't reliant on them like they used to be.

[–] Thorry@feddit.org 1 points 21 minutes ago

Yeah but Starlink isn't sustainable, it's burning VC just like all of those AI companies. Not as big as a rate like the AI companies, but still. And Starlink gets government contracts as well.

I think the only reason they ever got started with Starlink is to prop up SpaceX. SpaceX got their launch costs down by reusability and scaling in production. But there really wasn't enough demand for those costs to really matter all that much. So they got started with Starlink which requires a lot of launches and is one of the few things that keeps on requiring a lot of launches forever. But the revenue isn't enough to cover the launches, construction, maintenance, ground stations etc. And the only reason the service is even a little bit competitive is because of the terrible state of US infrastructure. With 5G networks being rolled out everywhere and fiber continuing to expand, the market for satellite internet is shrinking all the time. The terrestrial based services have the advantage their infrastructure doesn't fall from the sky every four years.

So as the government contracts are under pressure at SpaceX and the Starlink VC money isn't infinite, Musks empire could collapse. By pivoting to AI and rolling everything into that, he can keep the grift going for years to come.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 hours ago

"Now they have to bail me out."

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 8 points 4 hours ago

Nationalize it. Take his company, his wealth and jail him for his crimes.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 10 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

What advantage does space provide at all?

You have to transport heavy great into a place with no cooling capacity... What?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 5 points 3 hours ago

No advantage, in fact a massive disadvantage.

Fascists lie.

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

No cooling capacity? Isn't it the extreme opposite?

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 16 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

No, it's pretty hard to get rid of heat in space, vacuum is a very good insulator. The only way is radiation.

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 hours ago
[–] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 14 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

No, space isn’t cold it’s empty. You need something to conduct away the heat, otherwise all you can do is passively radiate it

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Fascinating. Will look more into it to understand.

[–] Herr_S_aus_H@lemmy.zip 0 points 29 minutes ago

Welcome to middle school physics.

[–] Dultas@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

I think Scott Manly might have had a video on it (data enter in space) recently. I saw it on a feed but haven't watched it. I'm sure he would mention the issues with heat removal.

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 hours ago

https://youtu.be/DCto6UkBJoI

TLDW: cooling's fine if you use starlink V2 size and power (which is not very suitable for AI 'datacentre' use) because it works already.

This is not about a few huge datacentres, it's about a million small ones. There’s 99 problems with this (see Kessler syndrome !, radiation, …), cooling isn’t (much of) one.

Doesn't matter anyway, it just has to be vaguely plausible for a stock IPO pump (and dump) scheme while sweeping all that xAI debt under the rug.

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

https://youtu.be/d-YcVLq98Ew&t=8m24s

Doesn't say why a vacuum cannot conduct heat though, but it makes sense to me now anyhow. Heat is vibrating molecules so to mitigate the vibration you need adjacent molecules which aren't vibrating as much.

[–] jagermo@feddit.org 1 points 3 hours ago

Read the traveller sourcebooks, they especially for the ship designs. Good stuff

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

mainly no red tape trying to connect to a power grid, plus "free" solar power.

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 7 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Datacenters on the bottom of the sea are useless because of the difficulties of hardware maintenance and the snake oil salesman is trying to sell out space datacenters now.

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

Salt water is a bitch.

The point of these being in space is there is no maintenance.

Like they aren't doing maintenance in any starlink dish.

[–] FancyPantsFIRE@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Now if he rolls these into Tesla he’ll be on his way to ticking off one of the requirements to unlock his completely legitimate cagillion dollar pay package.

That agreement should have said excluding any acquisitions or mergers.

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