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SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites
- codingdave 5mo ago> ... data centres that won’t have an environmental impact here on Earth. Really? I wonder how they are going to get them up there without rocket launches?
- Ekaros 5mo agoAnd getting them down. Or allowing them to come down on their own... I doubt that is entirely environmental impact free.
- JPLeRouzic 5mo agoI wonder about the impact on our health of all the metals that will be present in the atmosphere after several months. For example, it is well known that lead in gasoline has increased crime.
- aruggirello 5mo agoLEO satellites come down on their own in a few months/years. 100 tons of metal burning in the atmosphere seems a lot, but it's barely the total mass of meteorites falling in 24-48 hours, actually.
- johnea 5mo agoTotally sidestepping the issue and refuting the words. Regardless of how they fall, they still fall on the planet. And this still ignores the massive atmospheric pollution of chemical rocket launch. Space elevator would be a big help with launch, but the trash is still dropped on the ground, or in the ocean, in the end.
- jauntywundrkind 5mo agoWe're only starting to see and understand the damage. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/scientists-measure-air-pollution-from-reentering-spacex-rocket-in-real-time-its-never-been-done-before https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/... https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-are-polluting-atmosphere https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-ar... Leave it to the chainsaw man who has already become the millenium's worst killer, to wreak yet more sad havoc and ruin upon the sphere. What absolute trash, what a mad frivolous pointless ambition meant only to crowd out anyone from thinking of this enormous mass stupidity, destruction. Taking up/taking over of space, for no clear stated reason or value except to steal from us all, to deny & claim from the rest. Madness. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(26)00008-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
- foxglacier 5mo agoMust has clearly stated the reason and value. You know that. You're just trying to be wrong because the internet told you you'll be a good person for hating him.
- jauntywundrkind 5mo agoGiant space data centers, up where what couple particles there are bouncing around are already 1000 degrees. It seems like an incredible amount of pollution to make, to go lord over everyone's heads. This isn't a plan that has any empathy for the earth or reason, except to just deny everyone else access, to burn as much rocket fuel as conceivably possible. So no one else can. Just go build some terrestrial solar, please, thanks. The man is the bloodiest butcher of the millennium and this is a vile stealing of shared human space. Your lack of actually saying anything and throwing random jabs my way to defend him is ignoble & distracting, adds 0 engagement.
- foxglacier 5mo agoHis stated reasons for SpaceX and Starlink are to colonize Mars. Starlink is to generate money to pay for the rest of it. Whether that's true or realistic doesn't matter. It is what he said his reason is, disproving your claim of "for no clear stated reason or value".
- ben_w 5mo agoA million satellites isn't going to be 100 tons; even if they're all on the small side, say 100 kg each, the total is 100,000 tons, therefore by your numbers if they last on orbit for 3 years they'd double to triple the mass rate burning up on aero entry. I think SpaceX actually talking about 1-10 tons/satellite making this more like 10-100x if they last 3 years, but between AI hallucinations getting and Musk's increasing disconnect from reality (let alone political toxicity) this is basically irrelevant. SpaceX won't reach these higher masses to orbit spread over this number of satellites regardless. Aggravatingly, I have seen research estimating that even the much smaller number of satellites currently in orbit is already enough to be unstable with regard to a Kessler cascade, and any question about the realism of Musk's goals from finance and engineering limits is clearly not enough to prevent this kind of scenario. Which may result in other governments interfering with his ketamine supply to make sure their satellites aren't caught up in one. Simplest helpful thing for the Kessler problem is "just"* have fewer larger satellites, and if Starship actually delivers the launch costs necessary to make space-based data centres worth the bother vs. just buying some cheap desert land, I anticipate Musk getting managed upwards by his staff in this regard. * nothing in space is "just"
- flashman 5mo agoMisleading, because satellites are made of different materials to meteors. Satellites are the dominant injection source of 24 elements into the atmosphere, including Al, Cu, Ti, Nb, Co, Zn, Sn, Pb, Ag, Li, V, Hf, W, Ge, Mo, Zr, B, and Ba. This list includes many transition metals, whose catalytic effects on ozone and cloud nucleation are mostly unknown. Copper in particular is a well-known catalyst for the destruction of ozone. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117726003509 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027311772...
- aruggirello 5mo agoSorry, you're right. My assumption was that, given meteorites are metal rich, and two orders of magnitude more mass, the human contribution was negligible. It turns out I was wrong.
- foxglacier 5mo agoWhy are so many people just desperate to imagine environmental, economic, or social harm from any new technology or ambitious projects? Are you all just too old to enjoy the thought of an amazing future that's better than today? Or are you too brainwashed by the negativity in the media and think disasters are the only things that can happen? Or are you just bitter about life and can't have any hope? Or do you just feel smug being a nay-sayer to anything ambitious?
- tzs 5mo ago> Why are so many people just desperate to imagine environmental, economic, or social harm from any new technology or ambitious projects? Rockets aren't new technology and they are not imagining the environmental harm. It has been known for a long time. It is just that with only ~300 launches per year (and about 35000 launches ever) the harm has not risen to the level of something that has to be limited. A million data center satellites is a significant increase in that harm. Furthermore data center satellite are expected to have a service life of maybe 3-5 years so there will be an ongoing 200-370k replacements needing to be launched. That's 3.3-6.2k launches per year at 60 satellites per launch.
- foxglacier 5mo agoYou need to quantify this "significant" amount of harm otherwise all you're saying is "doing any activity causes harm to something so doing more of that activity causes more harm" which applies to absolutely every activity. You would only point that out if you're feeling negative, not because it means something.
- ReptileMan 5mo ago100 tons is quite a lot of gpus. If they manage to solve such "minor" problems as powering and cooling them they could run for a decade or so without consuming or polluting. The methane burned to get mass into orbit is trivial - a 500MW powerplant burns that much in under a day.
- codingdave 5mo agoYeah, that response trivializes the massive burn that power plants perform each day. When I worked in a midstream gas company, I recall a meeting when we were explaining the business to some new IT folk, and talking about the plants that process 100K barrels. One new guy in particular literally dropped his jaw and said, "you process 100K barrels of gas a year??" The room looked at him like he was insane and the woman running the meeting politely replied: "No, per day." So acting as if "it burns less than a power plant" somehow means it is trivial is just a really odd take. Besides, the methane burn is one piece of the puzzle. There is more to environmental impact than just methane.
- ReptileMan 5mo agoYes it is trivial when humanity is burning 100 million barrels of oil per day and 300 tons of coal per second and 100 tons of natural gas per second.
- vkou 5mo agoThe problem isn't GPUs the problem is cooling them. Look into what percentage of the ISS by weight is radiators, look into how little power it can generate and radiate, and you'll see that space data centers is the shitcoin pitch of 2026.
- kingleopold 5mo agoAlso they are not building them in 3D space with current tech. We clearly don't have it. Cars barely drive themselves in cities, they are decade behind building and maintaining a. datacenter in space.
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- SilverElfin 5mo agoShould be banned. These companies are destroying a piece of the environment that belongs to all of us - the night sky.
- amelius 5mo agoLet's ban ads too, while we're at it.
- Keyframe 5mo agoWhere do we sign?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Bender 5mo agoAlong that line people should look into BUG ratings [1] for outdoor lighting, especially city operated lights. [1] [1] - https://www.landscapeforms.com/ideas/bug-rating-system-101 https://www.landscapeforms.com/ideas/bug-rating-system-101
- polski-g 5mo agoIf you people were in charge in the 1800s, you'd ban the industrial revolution and we'd still need slaves for everything.
- sedawkgrep 5mo agoYou don’t think there might be a better solution than having a dozen or more companies all launching thousands of satellites which all perform the same function?
- bobsmooth 5mo agoIs there one organization you trust to run the space internet for everyone on earth?
- androiddrew 5mo agoLet me fix your title: SpaceX wants investors to think that they will be able to launch millions of satellites.
- torginus 5mo agoYeah I remember reading that what killed the space industry in the 90s-2000s other than the collapse of the USSR and cessation of great power competition was the massive move to digital communications, particularly satellite TV - which mean that a smaller number of satellites could serve the expected demand.
- timschmidt 5mo agoSpaceX has consistently launched ~90% of the mass to orbit for the whole planet Earth over the last several years[1][2]. There's no one else who could more credibly make such a claim. 1: https://officechai.com/stories/spacex-launched-85-of-all-global-satellites-in-q2-2025-88-of-all-weight-lifted-to-orbit/ https://officechai.com/stories/spacex-launched-85-of-all-glo... 2: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/spacex-launching-87-90-of-all-orbital-payload-in-2024.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/spacex-launching-87-90...
- toasty228 5mo agoThey launched a grand total of ~10k starlink satellite, there is a long road between 10k and a million. Musk would be "the most credible" at claiming he'll have 1000 trillion dollar by 2050, it doesn't mean it's credible at all.
- timschmidt 5mo agoThey seem to have constructed a rocket with 10x the payload to LEO of the one they used to put those 10k satellites in orbit, and even demonstrated payload deployment. So I'd say 100k looks do-able for them today. 10x that seems aspirational, but not comically so. Folks hate Musk, but that seems to cause them to not see the engineering going on in front of them.
- tristanj 5mo agoStarlink has been so successful, it is facing a lot of competition in the next few years. Every major power wants their own, national starlink network. China's state-backed starlink competitor GuoWang is putting 13,000 satellites in orbit by 2030. They've already started launching satellites. China's Qianfan plans 15,000 satellites by 2030. AST SpaceMobile is building their own network. Amazon Leo plans for 3,000 satellites in orbit, and is already launching satellites. The EU is building IRIS², explicitly as a Starlink alternative. Russia, after realizing how critical starlink is on the battlefield, is building its own Rassvet network. They've already launched satellites.
- Zigurd 5mo agoCirca 2032: "Remember when everybody was going to launch constellations of thousands of satellites?" "Yeah, just like the data centers, only about 10% of that got built."
- dzhiurgis 5mo agoSovereign ones are definitely going to happen. Direct to cell 5G (aka global IMSI catcher) and SAR decoy is just too good to pass up.
- tuesdaynight 5mo agoI'm a layman in this field, and I always thought that satellites were supposed to take a very small space in orbit... until I saw a GIF made from Artemis 2 ship. Satellites were big enough that could see the queue of them orbiting Earth in the GIF. Maybe they were the bigger ones and I'm confusing them with Starlink?
- dwaltrip 5mo agoSmall things can reflect large numbers of photons :) The Artemis gif you are referring to only shows the satellites because the earth is eclipsing the the sun and they did a long exposure. Those satellites showing up in the gif are briefly catching the sun at the perfect angle.
- LightBug1 5mo agoOh ffs ... how is the homebrew laser defense industry coming along? Spec Priority: ability to attach said laser defense instrument to home telescope ... and enable user to blast those madafakkas out of the sky.
- amelius 5mo agoHow long until they turn a constellation into a giant LED billboard, showing commercials for Tesla?
- 28304283409234 5mo agoIsn't that a scene in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy?
- dwd 5mo agoRed Dwarf. A little more destructive pushing suns into supernova to write "Coke is Life" across the sky.
- doublerabbit 5mo agoASAP. https://futurism.com/russian-scientists-huge-advertisements-orbit-cities https://futurism.com/russian-scientists-huge-advertisements-...
- ridgeguy 5mo agoArthur C. Clarke beat them to it - the thought, at least. Watch This Space - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_to_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_to_the_Moon
- variety8675 5mo ago> Most people likely don’t think about how often they use satellite communications. But that Instagram post you made? You used a satellite. This article seems to confuse Starlink with ordinary cellular communications
- ivanjermakov 5mo agoThey also might confuse Starlink with GPS satellites which are completely different things.
- roelschroeven 5mo agoAlso some, or even many, people think that intercontintental communications use satellites rather than cables.
- dzhiurgis 5mo agoFacebook Messenger already works with Starlink - https://one.nz/faq/one-nz-satellite-frequently-asked-questions#data https://one.nz/faq/one-nz-satellite-frequently-asked-questio... so Instagram is probably not far off. Edit: wow even apple music is included in this.
- verzali 5mo agoBut this covers only a tiny fraction of people who use those apps. Most people don't send anything via satellite when using messenger.
- johnea 5mo agoThere is an upside: this may be the shortest route to eliminating any future launches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome Sorry Buck Rogers fan bois, should have left this fantasy in the 1950s...
- tristanj 5mo agoMentioning Kessler syndrome, especially in the case of Starlink LEO satellites, is the classic midwit signal.
- tzs 5mo agoWhat makes you think they are talking about Starlink satellites? The 1 million satellites in the article are data center satellites.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- CWwdcdk7h 5mo agoThey are supposed to placed on SSO, to avoid the need for energy storage, and that means LEO.
- johnea 5mo agoSo, IEEE is midwit? https://spectrum.ieee.org/kessler-syndrome-space-debris https://spectrum.ieee.org/kessler-syndrome-space-debris > ...space junk orbiting between 400 and 1,000 kilometers—where most low Earth satellites operate—is already unstable. And between 520 and 1,000 km, the researchers found, debris concentrations are at or near levels that might sustain runaway growth. With regard to starlink: > Starlink satellites orbit between 540 and 570 km altitude in multiple orbital shells I'm sure it'll be fine once there are a million 8-/ I would have to say, elon fanbois are the most classic midwits...
- exabrial 5mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 5mo agoWell, no shit. First grants went out in 2024, right in time for the administration to change; Lutnick put it on hold almost immediately. It also hasn't cost $42B; "By 2026, about half of the $42.45 billion allocated by Congress during the passage of the IIJA remained unused". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Equity,_Access,_and_Deployment_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Equity,_Access,_and_... Incidentally, BEAD includes LEO satellites as part of it. SpaceX got grants from it. (https://texasstandard.org/stories/spacex-demands-changes-federal-broadband-contracts-bead-texas-starlink/ https://texasstandard.org/stories/spacex-demands-changes-fed...)
- onlypassingthru 5mo agoThey've only spent half of the BEAD funds, $21B. 50 out of 56 final plans have been approved so the remaining half will be released. https://www.ntia.gov/press-release/2026/assistant-secretary-arielle-roth-announces-50-bead-final-proposals-approved https://www.ntia.gov/press-release/2026/assistant-secretary-...
- exabrial 5mo agoMy bad, the spent $21billion and haven't done a single thing.
- onlypassingthru 5mo agoThe $21B got us to 50 out of 56 final plans. Infrastructure buildout is always a slow, deliberate process because fuckups are even more expensive.
- 6d6b73 5mo agoSpacex will cause Kessler syndrom and bring the world economy down.
- Zigurd 5mo agoMeh. It's more like how else are you gonna set 10X the money on fire that Zuckerberg did with the metaverse?
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoAs long as those satellites are in a self-clearing orbit (below about 300 miles of altitude), Kessler is not a concern.
- conception 5mo agoI like that “not being able to use space for 25 years or more” is not a concern.
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoIt is a concern. We have to ensure those satellites are in a self clearing orbit.
- conception 5mo agoI think we agree but 300 seems too high to me. Maybe 250.
- wrs 5mo agoThe people who want to put data centers in orbit must be either much smarter than me, or much dumber than me, because I just don't get how that makes any technical or economic sense. Of course, it's possible nobody actually wants to do this, they just want to get funded to do it. (Old joke: "I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant...")
- ben_w 5mo agoFrom what I've seen (Google paper, IIRC), it only makes sense economically if Musk's stretch goals for price/kg to orbit for Starship become true. Technically it's fine, just take something like Starlink and use most of the power for compute rather than for comms. But financially, it depends on price to orbit being extremely low; not just lower than Falcon, but as low as Musk's best public claims about what may be coming at some point.
- PunchyHamster 5mo agoYeah but how's that more financially viable than "build your own solar battery farm to power data center on ground"
- hkpack 5mo agoLand is expensive, water is scarce, people don’t want sound pollution anywhere near them. Building a datacenter in the neighborhood is already unpopular enough that companies do tricks to prevent public from knowing what is being built and by whom in advance. Sending a small box with a panel to space may be a solution if a: the inside of the box is expensive and the cost to launch is cheap. You amortize the box over 2-5 years and burn it in the atmosphere afterwards. If the math is mathing, multiply by a million and voila, you have a datacenter in space where each rack is flying separately. With a regular compute it may not be profitable but with GPUs connected to each other by optical links? I think it may be possible.
- 7e 5mo agoIn the Sahara there is plenty of space and plenty of solar. Any heat you can radiate away in space, you can radiate away on Earth. Or, more simply, dig into the ground and pump heat into the cool earth.
- ChrisArchitect 5mo agoMarch 8th story OP? Some previous discussion: A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598415 Part of this announcement: xAI joins SpaceX https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862170
- cameldrv 5mo agoThis seems like a recipe for Kessler syndrome.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo agoSpaceX wants to self-deal artificial demand for launches.
- Zigurd 5mo agoWell smarty-pants have you got any better ideas for selling the worst IPO the 21st-century?
- GMoromisato 5mo agoI don't buy the opposition to orbital datacenters. I think that's just the perfect being the enemy of the good, which (sadly) is very common in environmental activism. Let's assume two premises: 1. Demand for AI compute will continue to grow for the next 10 years. 2. The cost of orbital datacenters will approach the cost of terrestrial datacenters (in $ per token terms). If you don't buy either of these two premises (and I agree that neither is guaranteed) then you don't have to worry. No one is going to waste money on orbital datacenters if they aren't profitable. But if you buy the two premises above, then what matters is whether orbital or terrestrial datacenters are better for the environment. And it turns out that, given the current energy generation mix, the CO2 emissions from terrestrial datacenters far outstrip the CO2 from launch. A 100MW datacenter will emit 1.5 million tons of CO2 over a 5 year lifetime (given average USA energy sources). In contrast, 10 Starship launches (~1,000 tons to orbit) will emit no more than 40,000 tons of CO2. Almost all other environmental effects will be proportional. So, if you care about the environment, and you believe/fear that AI will demand a lot of compute, then you should hope that orbital datacenter work out. If you really care, you might even help to develop them.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo agoI don't see how orbital datacenters will ever be able to compete with terrestrial. And assuming that the current mix of electric generation isn't going to become cleaner over time is an interesting take.
- GMoromisato 5mo agoCurrent mix of electric generation is not going to get 37 times cleaner in 10 years. That's the ratio we're talking about right now. But I do agree that the economic math is not a slam dunk. A lot of things have to go perfectly right for it to make sense economically. But that's the irony: Orbital datacenters are much cleaner than terrestrial ones, and if we don't deploy them, it will only be because corporations care more about profit than the environment. You would think environmentalists would be the ones pushing for orbital datacenters.
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- bastawhiz 5mo agoWho is paying for all this? Starlink revenue? I don't think so. To 100x what they've done over the last ten years and also fund it with money they're not being paid by others is implausible. They've got money, but they don't have THAT much money. They'd need to significantly juice up the whole rest of their business to not just be substantially more profitable, but also launch far more payloads. Does that much demand (for SpaceX) to get stuff into space even exist?
- HDBaseT 5mo agoSatellites for surveillance purposes. Budget is infinite.
- bastawhiz 5mo agoMore than they're launching now? It's not like a surveillance payload costs dramatically more to launch than a non-surveillance payload. Even the US doesn't have that many satellites to launch.
- jurgenburgen 5mo agoAnd Europe isn’t going to buy surveillance from a company that will pull the plug if we end up in a shooting war with Russia.
- ben_w 5mo ago> Budget is infinite. A fantastic way to break your economy. Even the extra half trillion/year Trump wants to spend on the military is increasing investor concern about buying US treasury bills.
- hackernudes 5mo agoisn't the IPO a way to get tons of money?
- ben_w 5mo agoI've seen it suggested that the IPO they're targeting (plus the similarly-timed ones from OpenAI and Anthropic) may be so high as to break the financial system. Investors need to have a trillion dollars available to invest if the stuff being added to the market is going to be worth a trillion dollars. (Phrased that way because while I hear they're targeting 1.5T valuation that doesn't mean they'll be selling 1.5T of shares).
- thefounder 5mo agoSo there must be a big story for the IPO….Remember that Tesla is still not selling actual/real self driving cars. I would say stock wise it would worth it to gable b/c Tesla did so well but SpaceX is being IPO-ed as it would have already have datacenters in space and ride hailing to Mars
- jocelyner 5mo ago[dead]
- saddat 5mo agoRelevant : https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/ https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/
- insane_dreamer 5mo agoAt what point does the LEO space become too crowded? Is there some optimal density beyond which things are problematic?