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.
This article seems to confuse Starlink with ordinary cellular communications
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...")
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.
SpaceX wants investors to think that they will be able to launch millions of satellites.
Really? I wonder how they are going to get them up there without rocket launches?
Spec Priority: ability to attach said laser defense instrument to home telescope ... and enable user to blast those madafakkas out of the sky.
Some previous discussion:
A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598415
Part of this announcement:
xAI joins SpaceX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Sorry Buck Rogers fan bois, should have left this fantasy in the 1950s...