Altman and Musk Spar Over Space Data Centers: Experts Agree They're Far from Reality
Sam Altman publicly criticized Elon Musk for promising short-term space data centers, and industry experts confirm such projects will not be viable until the 2030s.
Over the weekend, Sam Altman and Elon Musk exchanged barbed social media posts, highlighting the gap between vision and reality in the space computing business. Responding to Musk calling him a scammer, Altman said Musk is the one selling public market investors on short-term space data centers. Altman's view aligns with what many experts have concluded but public investors seem to ignore: space data centers will not become a serious business anytime soon.
SpaceX's plans to launch a fleet of orbital data centers for AI inference tasks are the main driver behind the company's two-trillion-dollar valuation. Bullish analysts say the potential for that computing power to fuel SpaceXAI's models or act as an orbital neocloud is unprecedented in the AI boom. However, subject-matter experts—from entrepreneurs behind other space data center startups to Google's orbital compute team and engineers who have done the numbers for fun—all say the same thing: it won't make a big dent until we have much cheaper rockets and the ability to produce high-powered satellites at low cost, en masse.
Musk's answer is predictable: Starship, SpaceX's huge new rocket, is expected to make its thirteenth test flight as soon as July 16. If Musk's team can get the vehicle to fly again and again, the data center business case could close. But even if the company successfully recovers both stages, operational reusable flight is still likely years away, and space data center launches will likely take a back seat to SpaceX's commitments to NASA and building out Starlink. SpaceX also conceded during its IPO roadshow that Starship may not be fully reusable in the near term and will need to dispose of each second stage per launch, which would undermine economical space data centers.
That's why Musk's rejoinder—"we start flying them next year"—falls flat. SpaceX could certainly launch a satellite equipped for high-speed data processing next year, but the big question is when it can launch and manufacture them at scale. That question likely belongs to the 2030s.
