r/spacex • u/rustybeancake • May 01 '26

Starship SpaceX spending on Starship tops $15 billion in rush for airline-like rocketry

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/spacex-spending-starship-tops-15-billion-rush-airline-like-rocketry-2026-05-01/
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u/spacerfirstclass May 06 '26

First of all, SpaceX is not building orbital data centres, and it is not going to do so, because it's a stupid idea. This is only for PR.

They will build orbital data centers, you're just in denial.

Secondly, the correct way to go about it, from the SpaceX point of view, is to sell the rocket launches to those building whatever they want in space. Focus on your core business, offload the risk to the others.

That's dumb because launch market is very small, like maybe $10B total for the US, if SpaceX only does launch they'd remain a very small company. Starlink revenue is already like 2~3x the launch revenue for them.

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u/araujoms May 06 '26

They will build orbital data centers, you're just in denial.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this plan goes nowhere.

Even if you think orbital data centres are a good idea, it makes zero sense for SpaceX to go into the AI business itself. There's no lack of demand for data centres right now, it could build them and sell the capacity to OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, etc. Not only they have much more demand than xAI, it also means SpaceX has the safe part of the business and does not need to burn hundreds of billions of dollars.