The Tesla CEO claims ‘orbital data centres’ would be the first step towards becoming a civilisation that can harness the sun’s full power’
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has applied to launch a million satellites into Earth’s orbit – in what he says would be the first step to becoming a hypothetical alien society.
The Tesla CEO claims these ‘orbital data centres’ are the most cost and energy-efficient way to meet the growing demand for AI and will deliver the computer capacity required to serve ‘billions of uses globally’.
By doing so, Musk says it would be the first step towards becoming a ‘Kardashev II-level civilisation – one that can harness the sun’s full power’ which is a reference to a scale of hypothetical alien societies proposed by an astronomer in the 1960s.
Currently AI-powered centres are large warehouses full of powerful computers that process and store data but SpaceX claims the processing needs due to the ever-expanding use of AI are already outpacing ‘terrestrial capabilities’.
SpaceX already has a Starlink network of almost 10,000 satellites, which provide high-speed internet, but that has been accused of creating congestion in space, which Musk denies.
Musk wrote on his social media site X: “The satellites will actually be so far apart that it will be hard to see from one to another. Space is so vast as to be beyond comprehension.”
The satellites would operate at low-Earth orbit altitudes and SpaceX claims they would be a greener alternative to traditional centres, which require enormous amounts of power to run and water for cooling.
Experts have previously cautioned the growing number of hardware in orbit because of a possibility of crashes between objects and that it remains an expensive and complex undertaking. Musk has previously rejected claims that his satellites were taking up too much room and crowding out competitors.
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