[Starlink] Re: Data centers are racing to space — and regulation can’t keep up

[Nick Matthews <matthnick@gmail.com>]

The underlying theory here is if someone builds a model that can improve
itself faster than humans, they win. Military, economy, future problems,
etc. That could have a lot of real on-Earth impact. There's investments and
races going on that support that theory.

If the major limiting factor is how big and fast you can build power plants
on earth, and assume the person with the most access to power wins, it
starts to make more sense.

However, there's also a giant list of technical assumptions that need to be
true for those assumptions to fly (get it?). And those technical
assumptions don't necessarily need to be true in order to cash the checks
from people that either want to compete in that race or invest in someone
that is.

Some of the assumptions I've come to include:
 * Adding more power and data to models eventually gets you to the
intelligence needed to hockey stick. (Versus solving this problem with a
different approach, algorithms, or different kinds of data.)
 * The models, data, and underlying algorithms aren't easily replicated by
others once they start exponentially increasing in ability. E.g. can
someone like Deepseek just take the outputs of the first mover, and then
not require the same power capacity and replicate a similar value. This
would slow down the first mover velocity benefits.
 * AI eventually starts creating returns.
 * Launch costs go down significantly (x10?)
 * There's enough room in sun synchronous orbit to run at power scales not
possible on earth without kicking off Kessler
 * A combination of very large solar panels, radiative cooling, fluid
exchange between them, the computing, propulsion, and any necessary
redundancy of these components is still economical.
 * Operational loss due to radiation, micro asteroids, and general
component failure is tolerable.
 * Components like GPUs and RAM and underlying bus structures can be built
to be more radiation tolerant.
 * Burning up new orders of magnitude of amounts of elements in the
atmosphere can be managed (aluminum, silicon, etc.)
 * Or, there is some amount of in-orbit recycling and manufacturing without
returning material back to Earth.
 * Bandwidth can be built for 1) intra cluster within a satellite, 2) cross
cluster via OISl, 3) Back to Earth using RF or lasers.
 * Regulatory bodies agree with the risk versus reward and approve this
kind of plan.
 * The smarter-than-human AI doesn't decide to destroy the human race in a
move of self preservation because the AI companies didn't have time for
boundaries.

I think it's a neat thought experiment, even if it's a little terrifying in
scale and impact if it's remotely possible.

-nick

On Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:33 PM David Lang via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
>
> > Block spots in orbit
>
> at the scale that he operates, everyone else combined in in the noise.
> Starlink
> is already several times the number of other satellites in orbit combined.
>
> besides, in the long run, he's talking about launching from the moon into
> solar
> orbit, not earth orbit, but even if he was just talking about launching
> into
> earth orbit near the moon's orbit, it's not like there are very many
> satellites
> there to contend with.
>
> > From a technology point of view, this is bonkers.
>
> if you only look at technical details, you may be right, but if you add
> the
> regulatory burden and delays in building traditional datacenters, that may
> be
> enough to change the math.
>
> Now, if we could ease the regulations so that it's easier to build power
> plants
> and hook up to the grid (or get small next-gen nuclear power plants
> operational
> so they can be dropped at the datacenters), that could change the math
> back.
>
> David Lang
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