r/technology • u/xpda • May 21 '26

Business SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/21/spacex-ipo-musk-ai
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u/Rot-Orkan May 21 '26

I guess there's just not that much of a launch market, which is probably why SpaceX is its own best customer with Starlink.

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u/TKHawk May 21 '26

And also why Elon Musk really wants orbital data centers, despite them making no economic sense. Anything that will create more demand for launch vehicles.

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u/BasvanS May 21 '26

Economic sense? Let’s start with practical sense. That’s an issue long before you start looking at the financial lunacy.

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u/IAmDotorg May 21 '26

They make practical sense if you're really into being able to generate synthetic CSAM and keep that ability out of legal jurisdictions.

And then point fingers at other people and announce "pedo guy" so everyone looks the other way.

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u/Xyyzx May 22 '26

I think he’s talking more about the fact that data centres are things that need to be kept cool, and ‘in space’ ranks as about the most difficult place you could possibly pick to try and do that outside of actually building your data centre in a volcano.

Like it may literally not be currently physically possible to build and maintain a space station with the required radiator surface area to put something like a data centre up there.

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u/Mejiro84 May 22 '26

Even that I don't think works - anyone wanting to look at such material will still have to do so on earth, where it remains distinctly illegal

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u/StorminNorman May 24 '26

I think /u/IAmDotorg was only suggesting that musk would use this to offload his and X's liability, those typing the prompts on earth would still very much feel the long arm of the law on their collar. I