SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the tech firm could witness a key breakthrough this year that sets the stage for space to be the next frontier for data centers.
In a new interview with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Musk says SpaceX is looking forward to achieving full reusability of rockets this year.
Musk highlights that no one in history has achieved the technological feat that could drastically cut the costs of sending satellites into space.
“If you have to throw your aircraft away after every flight, that would be a very expensive flight. But if you only have to refuel, then it’s the cost of the fuel. And so that’s really the fundamental breakthrough that gets the cost of access to space, we think, below the cost of freight on aircraft. So, under $100 a pound type of thing, easily. So it makes putting large satellites into space very cheap. And then when you have solar in space, you get five times more effectiveness, maybe even more than that, than solar on the ground.”
According to Musk, full reusability opens the door for AI compute to run in space using solar-powered satellites and solves the energy bottleneck on the ground.
“If you’re in the shadow, then it’s very cold in space, just three degrees Kelvin. So you just have your solar panels facing the sun, and then a radiator that’s pointed away from the sun, so it has no sun incidence, and then it’s just cooling. It’s a very efficient cooling system. So the net effect is that the lowest-cost place where AI will be space, and that’ll be true within two years, maybe three at the latest.”
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