Musk Floats Orbiting AI Data Centers, Citing Earth's Power Limits

American entrepreneur Elon Musk says the servers and computing centers needed to keep artificial intelligence growing should move to near-Earth orbit, where solar panels could power them around the clock without straining terrestrial electricity grids.

Musk's argument, as reported, rests on scale: average U.S. electricity consumption runs a little over 500 gigawatts, and adding even 200 gigawatts a year for AI alone would mean expanding the country's entire power system by 40% annually - something he called "simply unrealistic." Those figures are his own estimates and have not been independently verified.

His proposed fix is solar power in space. According to Musk, the absence of atmospheric scattering lets photovoltaic cells produce roughly 30% more energy there, and orbital placement keeps panels facing the Sun continuously, free of day-night cycles and seasons - an efficiency claim that would need independent confirmation. He also said falling Starship launch costs would eventually make orbital generation and computing cheaper than ground-based equivalents.

Musk added that craft carrying Nvidia processors and Google TPUs have already been tested successfully in orbit, and that the first dedicated orbital computing complexes, under the name Star Mind, would begin launching next year. Those specifics - the testing claim and the program name - remain unconfirmed and rest solely on his account.

The remarks were reported by RIA Novosti on November 7; the outlet did not specify the venue or format in which Musk made them.

Source: RIA Novosti