SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed that the Starship rocket can deliver 300 Gigawatt solar-powered AI satellites to orbit amid space-based data center talks.
Tonnage To Orbit Solved By Starship, Says Elon Musk
Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) CEO Marc Benioff took to the social media platform X on Wednesday, sharing a video of Musk talking about the cost-effectiveness of having datacenters in Orbit vs on the ground.
Responding to Benioff, Musk shared an insight into his claims. "Starship should be able to deliver around 300 GW per year of solar-powered AI satellites to orbit, maybe 500 GW," the billionaire said.
He also added that on average, the electricity consumption in the U.S. was "500 GW," though he did not specify the time frame for the figure.
Data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that the U.S. generated over 4,151 terawatt-hours of electricity last year, which, when divided by the number of hours in a year (8,760), would give you a figure of approximately 473 GW.
"At 300 GW/year, AI in space would exceed the entire US economy just in intelligence processing every 2 years," Musk said, adding that the Starship rocket would solve "tonnage to orbit."
"Chip production is therefore the major piece of the puzzle to be solved," Musk said, adding that the "Tesla Terafab is needed" to meet the demand. The TeraFab is a proposed foundry by Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), reportedly in development with Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC). The automaker also pulled the plug on its Dojo Supercomputer team earlier this year.
Jeff Bezos, Alphabet Inc. Tout Orbital Data Centers
Musk's comments come at a time when talks of space-based data centers have been gathering steam. Last month, Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos touted the idea of Gigawatt-scale data centers in space, sharing that the data centers could prove to be more cost-effective.
Bezos is also reportedly backing a new startup, dubbed Project Prometheus, which focuses on AI applications in the automotive, aerospace and scientific research sectors, much to Musk's amusement, who termed Bezos a "copycat" as another one of the Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder's enterprises could prove to be a Musk-backed company's rival.
Elsewhere, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Sundar Pichai also outlined Project Suncatcher, which aims to launch a low Earth orbit data center powered directly through solar energy in orbit.
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