LEO

arenteria21

SpaceX was just approved for thousands of additional LEO satellites. I’m sure their service will improve with that. Now how that holds up in dense urban clusters stands to be tested.

TastiSqueeze

There are a lot of ways to spin this. LEO satellites could be leveraged to deploy cell phone service worldwide with very few issues. It would involve some changes to the satellites. IMO this is an expansion of spacex where both data and phone connections will be readily available. With an appropriate converter/amplifier, you could put a unit on the roof to pull in spacex internet and easily convert it to cell phone service inside the building. The key is that spacex needs bandwidth to have these options.

Avsunra

This isn't Starlink satcom, it's about Starlink mobile acquiring a nationwide 800mhz LTE spectrum portfolio. Starlink mobile is much cheaper and less capable, and falls under the 3gpp non terrestrial network (NTN) spec. It's not the same thing as a satcom link but it's still supported by a LEO constellation.

Avsunra

> they need to launch rockets and satellites to compete with companies that... checks notes... have already built their cell phone towers... Not disagreeing with you on this, but we should remember that the launch cost per kilogram has been steadily declining as SpaceX builds more ships and gets more launches every year. Will Starship be ready tomorrow, this year, this decade? Who knows, but at this point the trend on falling launch costs seems obvious. > all the current cell phone companies have to do to compete in remote areas is stop being cheap and build towers out there. it will always be cheaper than rockets and satellites. Falling launch costs as a method of reducing infrax expense isn't the whole story. A legacy provider will never build a tower in a town of 30, without charging an arm and a leg to earn back that cost, it won't happen until it makes financial sense, the infrax is limited by geography in this way. LEO sat constellations don't have the same restrictions, expanding the constellation to include the same town means that other geographic areas falling under the spot beam of these satellites as they orbit the earth get expanded access and more network resiliency. Starlink's infrax cost per user is not restricted by geography in the same way it is for legacy providers. If the major hurdle for expanding infrastructure for Starlink is trending downward while the major hurdle for expanding infrastructure for legacy providers is ever present, do they ever cross over? That's the major question in my mind, again I'm not saying it happens any time soon, but it's a serious question that should not be so easily dismissed.

machinegunkisses

Man I'm sorry, but ASTS doesn't make any sense. They are launching satellites into LEO to provide service in -- checks notes -- two countries, the USA and Canada. Their satellites will spend the vast majority of their time chilling out, doing nothing. I mean, assuming they can build and launch enough of them to begin with. The US telcos don't need to do anything to compete with SpaceX. They have thousands of miles of fiber, thousands of towers, and maybe most importantly, a sufficiently competent workforce to maintain things. If there's one thing Elon hates, it's paying for labor. Elon will price very aggressively, of course, but the reality is the telcos will just lower their prices. This is a nothingburger.

rowinghorse7

Ambani's company Jio unveiled its proposal for 1600 LEO satellites and 23 ground stations yesterday at one of India's mobile conferences. Musk started tweeting after the news broke.

RocketVerse

15k satellites in LEO using low band spectrum is quite a bit different than 7 geostationary ones in the case of Sirius XM.

TipsyPeanuts

At that frequency, even in LEO, their beam will be the size of Colorado. Capacity will be non-existent. This is a short buy oppertunity

Sufficient_Habit5091

u/JohanLiebert92 >Can't wait for a SPCX satellite to crash LEO, Low Earth Orbit is so crowded already, satellites get dangerously close to one another every 22 seconds. The "CRASH Clock" which measures hypothetically how many days it would take for a major collision to occur without constant maneuvering and path adjustment has gone from 164 days in 2018 to only 2.2 days today. Our tech overlords are basically mocking us at this point. They're flexing how much absurdly stupid shit they can waste society's money on AND get rich dumping the resulting projects on us as bagholders.

TheWhyOfFry

You do the thermal design of LEO data centers? Do tell how they plan to radiate all the heat.

Key_Cheetah7982

even LEO is farther away than any cell tower

LeSeanMcoy

Starlink more or less has global coverage everywhere they’re allowed to be. A few countries won’t allow them, and then you have limits in areas that are protected for interference purposes + the GEO exclusion belt. After that, though, there is just physics that limit things. If you’re in a mountainous area where you can’t make links with their LEO constellation, you’ll have a tough time. Not too many places on earth like this, but the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic is actually much more preferable than a mountainous ravine, for example. If you’re limited to a small elevation angle, it’ll kill your coverage.

Jazzlike_Studio_2028

you mention radiation but forget about radiation‑induced single event upsets that keep happening every hour in LEO, even with hardened silicon. Google’s own reported TPUs have a 1 in 10 000 SUS per day figure – at scale that kinda adds up. also the sheer data bandwidth to move big training sets out of the atmosphere is not trivial – any high‑gain phased‑array dove thing gets pricey. so yeah, the concept is cool but the devil’s in the details

JohanLiebert92

"Both sides welcomed Japan’s Rakuten Group and the U.S.-based AST SpaceMobile cooperation for the development and deployment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite infrastructure." ASTS GANG CHECKING IN!!!

Sufficient_Habit5091

LEO, Low Earth Orbit is so crowded already, satellites get dangerously close to one another every 22 seconds. The "CRASH Clock" which measures hypothetically how many days it would take for a major collision to occur without constant maneuvering and path adjustment has gone from 164 days in 2018 to only 2.2 days today. Our tech overlords are basically mocking us at this point. They're flexing how absurdly stupid shit they can waste society's money on AND get rich dumping the resulting projects on us as bagholders.

Successful-Grab6091

Depends on the situation but when it comes to the stock market, I think some of it has to do with how quickly advancements in Ai and space are actually being completed… i think some people may have already begun to factor in space economics into the stock prices I think while a lot of us have been distracted by terrestrial Ai and data centers, we have missed the beginning of the off-planet shift. We’ve already almost shifted out of the theoretical Phase 1: The terrestrial infrastructure build. With simulations and initial phase 2 testing. Starcloud completed this when they trained an Nvidia Ai llm in LEO this year “physically derisking the entire thesis of space-based compute” Phase 2 literally launches tomorrow on SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-18 rideshare mission with Star Catcher Industries Protostar prototype and Google’s Project Suncatcher. Once Star Catcher and Suncatcher’s mission tests go live it creates the narrative shift from capEx on Earth to tangible asset performance in orbit and “Wall Street can no longer dismiss space economics as theoretical fiction.”

No_Communication8613

Wait,What! There are dozens of satellite internet providers. Starlink has competitors. And there is a company that plans on just using blimps instead of satellites to provide connectivity. And I hate to tell you this but there are also hundreds of companies in aerospace. Amazon Leo is happening and SpaceX along other areospace companies will help set it up. Amazon LEO is set to be the leader. 390 satellites up so far with over 3,000 scheduled to be delivered.

TheGoodBunny

Amazon has LEO too

DiminishedProspects

Not mentioned , but if a fraction of Starlink’s pie-in-the-sky TAM from the SPCX IPO is real, then LEO will take a meaningful market share of that biz longterm.

Upset-Motor-2602

Is that you LEO?

Heavy_Chest_8888

Does Iridium Network have the same business as SPCX's LEO satellites? If yes then it's massive. Cause the satellite business actually generates more revenue for SPCX than its actual rocket launching business.

Thebaxxxx

#LEO SHORTED 761 SEPTEMBER PUTS LOL. Cant make this shit up. Notice how the entire matrix did a 180? We went from Eyeran quiet to "Fresh strikes" The news mill churned from "recovering market" to full on ber fud across every channel. Sprads are now guaranteed profit from the open trade. This whole thing is owned by shitadel LMAO. SEE YALL AT 690

Skittler_On_The_Roof

SpacePal.  The only place you'll be able to trade some new crypto he creates that claims to circumvent all earth-based government regulations because it'll be based in the LEO constellation of satellites.

Catprog

Technically at LEO the atmosphere is dragging them back into the planet but that is small.

MaitakeMover

Yeah it’s these retarded 20-year olds that get their news from Snapchat and TikTok that think semiconductors aren’t already peppered throughout LEO. Mindless sheep that hate Elon cause the TV told them to lol

Skittler_On_The_Roof

LEO radiation is pretty easy to mitigate.  Maintenance isn't happening, but if you build in enough redundancy to last a few years it'll be too obsolete to want to maintain.  Space debris is also pretty easily mitigated.  It's not like building tech things that orbit the earth is new. Cooling it is the big hurdle.

Ambitious-Profit855

So... Wikipedia: Price per Kilogram: Delivering cargo to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) via Falcon Heavy costs roughly $1,500 to $2,350 per kg depending on the recovery mode. And Nvidia: The NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale system weighs roughly 4,000 pounds (about 1,800 to 1,814 kg), which is comparable to the weight of a pickup truck. Which means launching a Vera Rubin Rack costs ~3.6 million USD. The rack itself is supposed to cost double that, so it adds 50% to the unit cost. And then comes the whole cooling, power supply etc, which I also imagine to be more expensive to DO IN FUCKING SPACE.

Vlisa

People really bragged that LEO wrote a 70 page essay and gave him all their money to lose. Haven't they ever heard of a book before?

Equal_Heat5947

This is just restating the conspiracy theory a different way. If your theory is correct, ONLY THE STOCKS LEO OWNED WOULD HAVE GONE DOWN, but ALL high beta went down. The reason is because it was a broad deleveraging which happened for two reasons: depreciation of the yen and inflation/economy fears which started June 5th.

stoked_7

It's like the OP didn't even use google to ask if the problems they posted are solvable. \- **Fixing broken parts is impossible when hardware is miles above the Earth.** 1. High Redundancy (Fault Tolerance) Over-Engineering: Satellites are launched with multiple backup processors, duplicate memory chips, and isolated power lines. Self-Healing Software: If a graphics processing unit (GPU) or memory module fails due to cosmic radiation, the system instantly isolates the broken part.Automatic Rerouting: The software automatically shifts running AI workloads to a healthy backup component without interrupting operations. 2. Disposable Constellation Model Planned Upgrades: Instead of sending an expensive repair mission, operators allow individual satellites to degrade over a set period (e.g., 3 to 5 years). De-orbit and Replace: Once a satellite's redundant backup components are entirely exhausted, it is instructed to burn up safely in Earth's atmosphere. Continuous Upgrades: A completely new satellite with newer, faster AI chips is launched to take its place, naturally keeping the hardware modern. 3. Robotic Servicing and Modular Swapping Modular "Hot Swapping": Larger, long-term orbital platforms are built using modular components called Line Replaceable Units (LRUs). Robotic Mechanics: Automated robotic arms—utilizing In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) technology—will pull out failed server bricks and click new ones into place. No Astronauts Required: These systems bypass the need for human spacewalks entirely, reducing both risk and operational costs. **Cooling down servers is very hard without air or water to absorb heat.** How Space Cooling Works No Air, Only Radiation: Because space is a vacuum, traditional fans, air conditioning, and cooling towers do not work. Heat cannot move via conduction or convection, leaving thermal radiation as the only way to get rid of waste energy. Liquid Loops: Pumps move liquid coolants through pipes attached to the AI hardware to absorb heat from the processors. Deployable Radiators: The heated liquid travels to large external panels pointed away from the sun into deep space, where the heat is radiated away. Modular Tiles: Some new designs use specialized, self-contained surface tiles that balance sun-facing solar cells on one side with heat-radiating surfaces on the opposite side. **Sending data back and forth causes massive delays compared to fiber cables.** Space-based AI data centers are not meant to replace Earth's fiber networks. Instead, they handle latency through three main strategies: 1. Processing Space Data *In Space* (Edge Computing) The primary customer for a space data center isn't a person on Earth streaming a video; it is other satellites. * **The Problem:** Earth-observation satellites capture terabytes of raw imagery (like tracking wildfires, military movements, or climate data). Sending this massive, raw data down to Earth over limited satellite radio frequencies creates a huge bottleneck. * **The Solution:** A space data center processes the data right there in orbit. It uses AI to analyze the images, filters out useless data (like clouds), and transmits only the critical, actionable insights (e.g., "Fire detected at coordinates X, Y") to Earth. This drastically cuts down total turnaround time. 2. Utilizing Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Data centers will not sit in high Geostationary Orbits (GEO), which are 35,000 km away and cause noticeable 240-millisecond delays. * They will operate in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), roughly 500 to 1,200 km above Earth. * At this distance, the physics-based round-trip delay drops to just **3 to 8 milliseconds**. 3. The "Vacuum Speed" Advantage for Long Distances Counterintuitively, for long-distance communication across continents (like London to Tokyo), space networks can actually beat Earth's fiber cables. * **Fiber Glass Bottleneck:** Light travels through the glass core of a fiber optic cable roughly **30% slower** than it does through a vacuum. * **Laser Cross-Links:** Space data networks use lasers to shoot data through the vacuum of space from satellite to satellite at the absolute speed of light, bypassing the winding pathways and slower mediums of terrestrial fiber.

PaperHandsTheDip

I'd wager citadel probably took profits on LEO's folio they sharked. At a guess they were up \~70% on a couple tens of billions in less than a month. All the semis / shit in that folio dumped hard today bringing the market down with it

OzTheMeh

I love that people think a single internet service provider should be ***WORTH 3% OF GLOBAL GDP*** and then pretend there is no competition despite people having been doing the exact same thing for the last 30 years. OneWeb, GlobalStar, Amazon LEO, Iridium, TeleSat, EutelSat as well as many others. This is akin to AOL in the 90s... Better go all in!!!

schoolofhanda

In the short term I think ASTS will take the market share being first to market and having instant market share with MNO partnership. Longer term, I think spacex builds a market position of their own and acts as a direct competitor to the MNOs. It has the capacity through Starship to get an array of its own to LEO remarkably quickly. It has acquired broadband capacity. It is sufficiently capitalized to develop technology quickly. 2028 will be an interesting year.

e1vi5

Ai slop on the risks. We’ve already got workable solutions for the big ones—redundancy + fleet replacement instead of on-orbit repairs, radiative cooling (standard spacecraft tech), LEO latency that’s already proven by Starlink, and radiation mitigation that’s routine on commercial sats. Hard? Yes. Impossible or pure delusion? No. Once launch costs drop further, the efficiency gains on power and cooling look very real for the right workloads.

Unusualsquinter

There are one or two start ups that are looking at being the “repair guy” in orbit, certainly LEO anyway. I can’t remember the name of them but I’m sure Seraphim IT has them in their portfolio. Even if you don’t invest in Seraphim, if you’re interested in space tech they’re well worth following (I think they held AST privately, but not 100%).

Playful_Prior5919

SpaceX's strategy for addressing the physics of orbital cooling centers on a distributed architecture, active liquid loops, and Starship's payload volume: Distributed Fleet vs. Mega-Structure: SpaceX does not plan to build a single, monolithic 1 GW orbital platform. Instead, the plan scales via thousands of modular "AI Satellites" deployed into Sun-synchronous orbits. A 1 GW aggregate network is broken down into small 50–150 kW nodes. Deployable Liquid Radiators: Each satellite features dedicated, foldable active liquid cooling wings using closed-loop ammonia (similar to ISS cooling systems). A single satellite carrying ~100 kW of compute utilizes a deployable radiator system of roughly 110 square meters (1,184\text{ ft}^2)—roughly the surface area of a small apartment. Leveraging Starship Volume: Because radiative cooling requires massive surface-area-to-power ratios, the physical footprint of these satellites—combining deployable solar arrays and radiator wings—is immense. SpaceX relies on Starship's high payload capacity to launch these large, complex deployable structures. Radiator Geometry & Orientation: To maximize thermal output, the ultra-thin radiator panels are engineered with high-emissivity coatings and oriented edge-on to the Sun to dump heat straight into deep space (3\text{ K}) without absorbing solar radiation. The primary critique remains economic and mechanical complexity. Pumping liquid ammonia through thousands of moving, foldable radiator joints in LEO introduces far more points of mechanical failure than standard static Starlink satellites.

North-Outside-5815

The claim was 100 -150t to LEO, fully reusable. It can generously do a third of that, if absolutely everything goes flawlessly. It can’t do rapid cadance and fully refuel a starship for a lunar mission in orbit. They have managed to land in the ocean without exploding once, by sheer luck. The heat shield was badly degraded, and even had the ship been caught perfectly, it could not have been just refuelled and sent back up. You don’t understand the challenges, you just believe in daddy Elon because he is very rich.

North-Outside-5815

Yup. It can currently get about 34 tonnes to LEO, nowhere near what was promised. It’s super far from ”rapidly reusable” Space refuelling has neber been done, and propellant boiloff is brutal. Using a starship upper stage to land on the moon is absolute insanity.

Nice_Grapefruit_7850

putting up a new one is replacing it as the other one can't do the job anymore. also in LEO the thing will de orbit due to drag.

believe1182

Infinite supply of 24/7 solar energy that is also stronger in LEO & higher, and pretty much limitless space in orbit. It is doable currently but still doesn’t economically make sense due to current technology limitations, but has potential to one day make economic sense

Icuras1701

100+ tons of LEO (law enforcement officers) in space? Sounds like there is a joke in there somewhere..

bubblegum-rose

“Yes this rocket can definitely get 100+ tons to LEO Ignore the fact that it has never flown a mission with more than 40 tons on a suborbital trajectory”

Aggressive-Donkey-10

1. there are no plans to "fix" the racks, the satellite/datacenters will just burn up after about 5-6 years from LEO 500km orbit, They have to launch about 20% or 2.5k new satellites a year to replace the constellation with new technology which will be sequentially better performance. The V3 models cost 500k each and 3 million each to launch, so that's currently about 8.75 Billion in maintenance Cap-ex, quite reasonable as Starlink is minting money currently and growing 100% a year. 2. the datacenter satellites will have radiative cooling on the back side of the solar panels, and the gas/liquid phase change will dissipate the heat. You can search out their designs and patents so far. This has already been done for years on the ISS. 3. the optical interfaces and dense wavelength multiplexors have already solved the problems of connecting and transmitting teraflop and eventually petaflop data streams. Yes there is a latency inferiority problem that can get better but never perfectly compete, yet when it becomes a much cheaper alternative, customers both retail and enterprise may easily overlook this. Musk has applied and received FAA approval for 1 million satellites so far. I don't think SPCXs play is about the Tech, I suspect it's about claiming LEO. Low Earth Orbit is the most valuable 3d space in or on or above the Earth, and he so far is parking/claiming the territory. Think of him as Cortez, planting Flags. It doesn't really matter what the "tech" or business model is at this point. Next most valuable prize is Lunar Pole territory where any Ice may be. Claim that and he claims the utility of the whole moon.

naturallin

I just asked AI your questions. Your skepticism is entirely justified, and from a traditional IT and facilities engineering standpoint, space-based data centers sound like a sci-fi fever dream. Terrestrial data center operators spend billions managing airflow, liquid cooling loops, humidity, dust, and physical security—none of which translate directly to low Earth orbit (LEO). However, the reason tech giants and venture-backed startups are aggressively pursuing orbital compute isn't because it's easy; it's because **terrestrial power and grid constraints are hitting a brick wall.** A breakdown of how proponents attempt to answer your points—and where the reality still heavily favors your skepticism—reveals the actual state of this "delusion." **1. The Cooling Problem (Radiation vs. Convection)** **Your Point:** *Cooling down servers is very hard without air or water to absorb heat.* **The Space Reality:** You are entirely correct that there is no air or water in space to use for convection or evaporation. Instead, space data centers rely entirely on **thermal radiation** (using massive deployable radiator panels that emit infrared heat into the cold vacuum of space) or closed-loop internal liquid cooling systems that pump heat to those external panels. **The Catch:** While a vacuum is a great insulator (making it hard to get rid of heat), space itself acts as a massive thermal sink if you have enough surface area. However, the thermodynamics for high-density AI chips (like NVIDIA GPUs pulling kilowatts per rack) require gargantuan radiator wings. If the sun hits those panels directly, the cooling efficiency plummets, creating severe design headaches. **2. Maintenance and Fixing Broken Parts** **Your Point:** *Fixing broken parts is impossible when hardware is miles above the Earth.* **The Space Reality:** No one is sending data center techs in high-G centrifuges to swap out a blown power supply or a fried DIMM slot. The hardware deployed in orbit relies heavily on **lights-out, highly redundant automation** and radiation-hardened components. **The Catch:** Hardware obsolescence moves at a blistering 12-to-18-month pace, while satellites are typically built to last 5 to 7 years. This means a space-based server will likely be obsolete before it even reaches its operational lifespan, making physical upgrades nearly impossible without robotic servicing vehicles (which are still in their infancy). **3. Latency and Data Transmission** **Your Point:** *Sending data back and forth causes massive delays compared to fiber cables.* **The Space Reality:** For real-time applications like online gaming, financial high-frequency trading, or standard cloud apps, orbital latency is a dealbreaker. **The Catch:** Proponents aren't pitching space data centers for standard web hosting. They are targeting **autonomous in-orbit processing** (processing raw data captured by Earth-observation and weather satellites *before* downlinking it) and **massive AI batch training/inference workloads** that can tolerate latency. Furthermore, laser-based optical inter-satellite links are vastly faster than legacy radio waves, though they still can't beat subsea fiber for Earth-bound users. **The Elephant in the Room: Solar Radiation** To answer your uncertainty: **Yes, solar radiation is a massive, measurable hazard in space.** Without Earth's thick atmosphere and magnetic field shielding it, cosmic rays and solar particle events cause "single-event upsets" (bit flips in memory) and degrade semiconductor gates over time. Space-grade compute requires heavy **radiation-hardening (rad-hard)**, specialized error-correcting code, or heavy physical shielding, which inherently makes the hardware heavier, more expensive, and slower than terrestrial counterparts. **Summary: Delusion or Destined?** Right now, you are witnessing the bleeding edge of a very expensive gamble. Startups and heavy-hitters have actually begun testing small-scale orbital nodes because power generation in space (uninterrupted 24/7 solar exposure) bypasses terrestrial grid permitting, local community resistance, and multi-gigawatt power shortages. Whether it scales into a viable commercial tier or remains a niche playground for specialized geospatial and AI workloads depends entirely on whether launch costs continue to plummet. But for mainstream enterprise IT? Your local data center isn't moving to the thermosphere anytime soon.

LegendTheo

> And on Earth you also have plenty of energy because of the Sun. Solar panels don't have to be in space to work. True, but they're about 40% more efficient in space, and they generate power 24/7, you don't need significant batteries if in the correct orbit. > a common issue that will become much worse if you congest a relatively long-lived orbit like you want the data centers to be in). No it won't. Debris is not caused by the act of launching satellites or them operating. Its also isn't caused by disposing of satellites in low earth orbit. Debris is only caused by shitty launch providers not bothering to limit debris generation (China) or collisions, which are extremely rare. > cooling is the hard part of space The only hard part of cooling in space is getting enough thermal transfer/time to cool what you need. Once you've desgined that space becomes amazing for cooling since you can sink and infinite amount of heat into it at the same effeciency. > and it fills sun-synchronous orbit LOL, 88k satellites will not "fill" those inclinations in LEO. It is a lot of satellites but space is ready, really, really big. > On the other hand, Elon's hopes and dreams are to build 88,000 satellites No that's the current plan, his dreams are to build millions of satellites. The 120kw is the smallest unit they'll ever build. And based on recent comments it looks like it'll be double that size. Closer to 250kw for the first satellites. > It's counterintuitive, but there's actually not enough room in space to fit more than a relatively miniscule Its not counterintuitive, you're just wrong. There is plenty of space for millions of satellites in sun snyc orbits inside of LEO. If we go past LEO (which many many comoute tasks could based on needed latency) and we could fit billions with no problems.

believe1182

Yes, the folks working on this are also aware. Like I mentioned one of the largest bottlenecks is getting gigantic radiators out, which is also one of the bottlenecks. However with the release of Starship and the ability to carry out over 150 metric tonnes of load into LEO this problem can be addressed. It's functionally impossible right now, because it is a limitation of how much load we can carry into orbit which is being addressed, and it doesn't make financial sense to do this currently. However who is to say heat radiation technology isn't improved, or closed loop cooling technology? A lot of possibilities open up when you have an infinite supply of energy from solar. Maybe we get more competitors we can launch large loads into LEO (Blue Origin), or improvements in re-usable large launch rockets? I wouldn't call any of this impossible in the future, and we're building and testing while improving the technology now.

aronnax512

The cost to move a pound of cargo by truck 1,000 miles to a construction site is about $0.05/lb. The cost to put a pound of cargo into LEO using a Falcon 9 reusable rocket is around $2,000/lb. It's going to be a long time before data centers in space makes sense for anyone other than the DoD.

sabautil

Not really, I know several companies that sell space hardened networking equipment specifically designed to be used in data centers. The ideas is this: when massive amounts of military or Internet data are collected by satellites they want processing to be done in space instead of sending it down then sending it back up. I know there is a lot of interest in this by governments who want a place where data can be stored and processed especially AI so it can't be readily taken out or blocked by emps etc. Let's just say the military and security plans in the area, according to news and budgets, are likely very high in this area. There is a whole infrastructure being planned up there in LEO. Yeah it's expensive, but you only spend it once. Ant that's the point, you want to be there first and solve those problems first because then you are the monopoly...then sell it to every country. This is right out of Peter Theil's playbook: Do the thing that normal majority of people disagree with but has a clear benefit if you suceed, and if you do succeed, you get permanent monopolies and the return is supposedly huge. This is why musk is pursuing projects that seem like lunacy to most. Yeah, creating reusable space rocket business is crazy expensive - but if you succeed you have a monopoly.

Sensitive-Talk9616

The Economist also takes other hare-brained ideas like flying cars or hyperloops "seriously". You can put the benefits of orbital centers on one side and compare them to costs. From a strictly economic point of view, the main benefit is solar power without any atmospheric attenuation, and no variation throughout the year. If you park the data center on the right orbit, you can reach up to 24/7 solar irradiation. But keep in mind that in low-Earth orbits (where we have most satellites, Starlinks, ISS, etc.), the Earth casts shadow like 50% of the time. So with all that let's say we get to 5-7x more solar power per square meter. If you need, say 1 square kilometer of solar panels in orbit, on Earth you'd need, in the worst case, maybe 10x so much. On Earth you'd also need battery storage to last you through the night, overcast days, winters etc. So let's go with a kind of worst case scenario. You have a 1 GW data center, you'd need 10 GW solar power capacity, in order to account for winters and bad weather (assume 10% effective power generation in the worst case). At $1/W, that's $10 billion for the power generation. In winter, let's say we produce the 1 GW necessary. But bad weather can temporarily reduce power output. Let's say we want a week's battery capacity. That's 150 GWh of battery storage. That's $20 billion at current rates. That's $30 billion in clean 24/7 energy & storage for a 1 GW data center. And this is kind of the worst case estimate, where we install enough to last a week long winter snow storm. But in summer we are overproducing by a factor of 10. In practice, you'd connect the powerplant to the grid and balance supply and demand across timezones, local weather, etc. But let's be generous to orbital data centers here. Now, how much is the actual data center? Estimates of the cost of a 1 GW AI data center are in the tens of billions. Let's say $50 billion. A large chunk of the cost are the compute hardware, but cooling and power infrastructure are also expensive for such huge installations. So, on Earth: a fully self-sufficient, off-the-grid 1 GW data center would be $50b (data center) + $30b (power + energy storage). As I said, the main benefit of the orbit is more power. We wouldn't need 10x overcapacity to last us through cold winters. We could just install, say 2 GW of solar capacity, and batteries to last a few hours (to cover the transit through Earth's shadow, unforeseen complications, etc.). So we save 80% on solar panels (only $2 billion) and virtually everything on battery storage (let's say only $1 billion). So, in Orbit: a similar setup would save 90% of power-associated costs. That's $27 billion less than the standard Earth's surface scenario. So this gives us a budget to work with. If we can design, build, launch, and maintain a data center in orbit such that it only costs \~50% more than on Earth (cost on Earth $50b, 54% of that is the $27b budget), there MAY be a chance for it to be economical. So the ultimate question is: can we even get this shit to space for less than that? How much do we need to launch into orbit? If you just look at the solar, at imagine some novel ultra-thin, ultra-light panels, 10x lighter than what we use down here, for a 2 GW capacity we still look at \~10 million kilogram. Even if we ignore the batteries, space will need sufficient heat sinks to dump all the heat accumulated from the incident solar radiation. Let's be generous and assume that's gonna be just another 10 million kilogram. Then look at the hardware. Let's ignore the weight of everything else, and only look at the actual server racks that we would need. For a 1 GW data center, using cutting edge NVIDIA's GB200 NVL72 server racks, we look at \~130 kW of compute for \~1'300 kilogram, or about 10 kg per kW of compute. That's another 10 million kilogram. All in all, we need to bring, at the very least, 30 million kilogram of stuff into space. In reality, with all the struts, and cooling systems, and power infrastructure, and cosmic radiation shielding, and fuel + engines for maintaining orbit, and more realistic solar panel and heat sink weight budgets, I could imagine easily double that. But let's go with 30 million kilogram. At the moment, SpaceX has the lowest cost per kg to LEO. They charge around $7k / kg. Let's say that they could do it, at cost, for only half of that (no profits, no error margins, economy of scale, and all that). Let's take $3k per kg. Just for the shit we listed above, we'd need nearly $100 b in launch costs alone. That's just how much it would cost to bring the material to space. Forget assembly, maintenance, lifetime costs, emergency repairs, the design and construction of cooling systems, designing and building the compute optimized for orbital operations, forget all that. Just launching it at our current cheapest costs is already 3x above our budget. And just to remind you, for the surface installation, we went with the worst case estimates, building out 10x overcapacity and battery storage for a week. In practice, you'd just connect it to a grid, sell power in summer and buy in winter. To me it simply makes no sense. Let's say we bring launch costs down by a factor of 10. That's the current best estimates to what is physically possible with fully reusable systems in the next decades. We'd still be left with a scenario where the budget to make it work and bring it up to space is just about the same as the cost of the pure compute. Just the NVIDIA server racks of a 1 GW data center cost on the order of $25 billion. Even if we could teleport it to orbit, we'd need to build and figure out everything, including the maintenance/life time cost, with a budget comparable to the raw compute itself. And I used the best case estimates for the space centers and the worst case ones for regular ones. That's already extremely difficult on Earth, where the cost of data centers is often more than double that of the compute itself. How can we do it even cheaper in space? This whole thing simply makes no sense. Not to mention, it introduces a bunch of new issues, like larger latency, variable latency throughout the orbit, space debris/micro-asteroid collisions, bandwidth limitations, the cost of terrestrial communications to send and receive all the data (can't just use optic fiber). I am pretty sure this will never work.

alanism

At some point, if not already now that there will be a need for military data centers. Solving engineering for it seems inevitable rather than impossible. 1. **Power Generation:** Highly feasible. $150\\text{ kW}$ peak power requires $600\\text{ m}\^2$ of solar array at $250\\text{ W/m}\^2$. A 70m wingspan easily fits this, requiring only $\\sim18.3\\%$ efficiency in LEO. 2. **Thermal Dissipation:** Highly feasible. A $110\\text{ m}\^2$ double-sided radiator at $1400\\text{ W/m}\^2$ rejects $154\\text{ kW}$ of heat. Using Stefan-Boltzmann, surface temp is $69\^{\\circ}\\text{C}$, safely below AI chip limits. 3. **Mass & Launch:** Plausible but aggressive. At $70\\text{ kW/ton}$, the $150\\text{ kW}$ satellite weighs $\\approx 2.14\\text{ tons}$. This requires ultra-light materials but allows Starship to launch 45-70 units per flight. The slide image and YT transcript in [here](https://share.gemini.google/Koyx6wFVk5nU) for those who want to ask it questions. I won't enter Space X at the current price point. So if you guys can keep the FUD going so it does hit a price that makes more sense.

StaysAwakeAllWeek

They dont actually have to be data intense. LLMs operate on text and require on the order of kilobytes per second in each direction as long as all the weights are stored on the sat. They will probably put them in SSO so they are always in sunlight and still in LEO. So yea they won't maintain them, they will dispose of them like starlink. My guess is they will target a 5 year life for gen 1 and 10 years for all further gens. Starship makes station keeping fuel mass cheap so theres nothing stopping them keeping them for longer

account-names

I was expecting something. J-LEO, and gov. All 'we are discussing', nothing on balance sheet. And zero fucking questions on why the last raise, while skipping future dilution. Come on

mohelgamal

your number for launch cost reductions. We already know some of the details. the AI satellites are going to be basically modified V3 starling satellites, each capable of 120 Kw. They should cost about a $500K excluding the AI chips themselves. The current cost for LEO delivery is $450 based on the announced current numbers of starship launch cost being 445Mil and its capability of 100-150 tons. that puts the current cost at $450/kilo with The target to be less than $100/kilo which is achievable if Starship achieved rapid reusability. On the other hand, Terrestrial datacenter costs are mind bogglingly high, even assuming that you will get the permit to build them in the first place (half the planned projects are stopped due to local resistance). and even after they are built, the operating costs, property taxes, personnel, security, bathrooms, water, fuel costs etc, all add up to an insane amount of money. I did some math on the economics in another post and the short of it was that the cost of launching a gigawatt of compute in space even if we use a 10% satellite loss rate and using todays space X launch costs (not Elons optimistic numbers) and the cost was similar to the upper end of terrestrial datacenter costs today. if Elon numbers ban out (which I wholeheartedly doubt), launching AI satellites will be only a fraction of terrestrial build costs.

piratecheese13

Hot take: Starship flight 14’s results aren’t priced in. NET 8/20 depending on if the FAA approves the new flight path, but the plan is to orbit the vehicle for the first time, and deorbit to catch the ship at the launch site. (there’s also the problem with getting booster to soft splashdown, but they’ve solved that problem twice before. If that works, then even without proving re-fueling(needed for moon and mars), SpaceX will have a vehicle capable of reducing mass to LEO costs below the threshold where space data enters become profitable ($300/kg) But if the ship catch fails, I see SpaceX dropping down to 20 overnight. Especially if the launch mount or chopsticks get hit. If the ground storage fuel tanks, get hit, that’s the end of the whole fucking company.

WhiteCollllarCrime69

LEO, MASSAGE MY PROSTATE :belt:

CreativeLet5355

I see. What is the value of a company who can launch more satellites, faster, than any other option on earth? What is the value of the company with the most advanced rocketry who can deliver larger payloads into space more frequently and at a lower unit cost than any other company or government on earth - more reliably too ? And that such capabilities are accelerating? What is the value of a company with so much LEO satellite bandwidth it altered a foreign conflict just by providing a blacked out country with viable telecommunications at the start of a war ? I don’t own SPCX and I don’t own Tesla or any Tesla products. But I am seeing unparalleled scalable and reproducible capabilities, not yet monetized, achieved by no other company OR government on earth. And it’s accelerating not stagnating. I have no idea what it’s worth. But you couldn’t take $100 billion and reproduce it. I’m not sure you could take $250-500 billion and reproduce it. Im not sure if theres sufficient untapped expertise to do it either. Given that, and discounting all the speculative stock buying of a small amount of shares, i tend to just think “shit is suoer valuable” and it’s not yet clear how to value it to me.

BiggieMoe01

LEO = Low Earth Orbit = ASTS?

Jimmy_Nail_4389

> "decades of pissing about" dude they are by far the world's best launch provider and own 60% of the satellites currently in orbit. They've come insanely far from where they started. Yeah decades of pissing about with reusability, funny how you move the goal posts and STILL no benefits to orbital datacentres. The fact they put a lot of starlink into LEO is not that impressive any of the space agencies could have done the same with that level of government funding. > Calling anyone that's impressed with what SpaceX is doing an Elon dick rider is just retarded. You are retarded, you've totally glossing over all his failure and his current stupid plans that will NEVER EVER work. > If I have faith in anything it's the people over at SpaceX, not Elon himself. Yeah, you could have said that about Tesla and then we got the CyberShite, another massive Elon failure.

PaperHandsTheDip

It was quite intentionally done. A bunch of funds realized there was too much leverage in the market and shorted the fuck out of semis / ai companies. There were tens of billions behind that trade (whale hunting overleveraged guys). Funds made record profits on it... kinda fucked tbh. The massive pump we saw last thursday (basically a 10-15% pump on all the semis, with SOXL jumping 25%) was actually funds closing their shorts. It happened the day after LEO's fund was liquidated.

kal14144

Qianfan seems to be really scaling up its LEO satellite deployments which means a Starlink competitor (potentially with Chinese state subsidies) should be on the market in the next year or 2. That’s about 70% of SpaceX revenue potentially facing serious price pressure.

m1cha3l57a

You are exit liquidity This company incinerates money. And then it dilutes shareholders and buys some companies revenue stream and restarts the cash burn If you look at where Spacex makes money, it’s Starlink. It’s not launching Starlinks into space That’s why Bezos is focusing on LEO. Subscription satellite internet is the only chance either of these companies stand a chance of existing off their own revenue stream RKLB stands no chance until they give up trying to build and launch rockets And if you disagree, then you need to read the annual and quarterly reports and do the damn math

StonkGoUp

For real. I’m in a tech related field and use Starlink semi-frequently. It’s awesome, low earth orbit sat is the future of communications. ASTS is somewhat in the running but I haven’t looked into it. I’m heavy into AMZN and they are rolling out more LEO

SeattleOligarch

Management shortened it to LEO. You know each letter costs extra these days

Neither-Signature-81

I fucking hate Elon and spacex but they have really brought the cost of launches down. Cargo is 97% cheaper to get into LEO than when we used to space shuttle. That is amazing.

boyWHOcriedFSD

Eclipse periods in LEO are real (roughly 30-40% of each orbit). That’s why every satellite already flies with batteries and oversized solar arrays. Higher orbits or sun-synchronous designs cut it further. Not the gotcha you think it is. Radiation is a solved engineering problem, not magic. Shielding, rad-hard chips, error correction, and redundancy are how every satellite and the ISS already run computers in space. Dust in the Sahara still destroys equipment and optics over time; radiation is managed daily. And no, “shitty transmission infrastructure” was about hauling power out of the middle of the desert on terrestrial grids, not Starlink. Nice try moving the goalposts. You can keep the personal shots. The physics doesn’t care.

Specialist_Whole_918

Have you asked all the investors ? Investors might be a bit silly, but they know elons talking a lot of nonsense and hyperboles. They are simply betting on a space company who right now owns almost the entire launch market as has an enormous LEO network and is working on a reusable second stage which will bring down ton to orbit price even more, causing the launch market to grow and enable a space industry where they will be leading by miles. That is what people are betting on. Elon or whoever saying something about capturing the future AI market is a minor detail.

Pete26l96

here is my plan, you may copy. full port into $AMZN, all aspects of their business have been popping off (prime video, retail, ads, grocery, aws, and now their satellite internet LEO). Jassy who has been historically known for sandbagging himself has been saying their chip business has $200B+ in commitments (gravitron and trainium). Google is cool too but Amazon is trading at a lower relative historic valuation and has more operating leverage. after amazon earnings, I believe the stock will be $275-$300, sell and full port into $KTOS (Kratos Defense). They are a small military contractor who are rapidly expanding, and building solid rocket motors, lasers, missiles, microwaves, and drones for a lot of prime contractors. If the stock pumps on earnings similar to AVAV, sell and dump everything into $UBER. If the stock is flat or goes down, hold for a while, as the CEO has stated he's received verbal commitment for a $1B hypersonics contract that they haven't added to the bookings but he believes will strongly turn into a formal contract (he has a history of being truthful). that's what im doing atleast.

rdude777

If you put aside all the wildly subsidized Starlink launches, the actual demand for LEO launch services is pretty small. It's simply not a sustainable high-margin business, it's a *niche* service and always will be.

Allout-Okarun

Anyone in AMZN for earnings? I feel it is about to be rerated bigly and the trajectory is constellation LEO

redhatUSA

“Shitty company” but is the leader in orbital payload delivery and LEO internet provider lmao

Common-Concentrate-2

Let's compare the "flagship" models of rockets from China and Spacex. | Feature | Long March 10B | SpaceX Starship (V3 target) | | -------------------- | ---------------------: | -------------------------------: | | Country | China | United States | | Height | 63 m | ~123 m | | Liftoff mass | ~760 t | ~5,000 t | | Stages | 2 | 2 (Super Heavy + Starship) | | First-stage engines | 7 × YF-100K | 33 × Raptor | | Upper-stage engine | 1 × YF-219 | 6 × Raptor | | Propellants | RP-1/LOX + Methane/LOX | Methane/LOX throughout | | Reusable LEO payload | ≥16 t | ~100 t (design target) | | Recovery | Sea-based net capture | Propulsive catch by launch tower |

Jealous_Bookkeeper20

The drop's mostly anchoring to past price action. The real question is how to model their space systems division when LEO constellation contracts face a continuous replacement cycle. If a satellite has a 5-year lifespan, 20% of the constellation de-orbits annually. That turns a lot of their space systems revenue into a CapEx treadmill for customers rather than pure expansion. How do you model their spacecraft depreciation?

AngronTheDestroyer

The stock has been sliding for months now, so I don't think its priced in. If the Japan contract is locked in, it shows ASTS met the requirements of a major government-backed program. Winning Japan's telecom market opens the door other nations as well... Of course the most important part is launching satellites, and fast, but I think J-LEO confirmation would be a good catalyst. I don't see why they would mention them being in "advanced discussions" with Rakuten yesterday in the 8K if they weren't hinting at big news.

schoolofhanda

Isn't the J-LEO contract already priced in. I'd almost expect a sell the news situation.

AngronTheDestroyer

I'm not worried. I anticipate a bunch of volatility over the next few weeks as the buyers/banks of the convertible notes exercise short call options to hedge. Based on previous convertible note offerings, price stabilized within a few weeks, and ran up again. I am hoping we don't go under 50 and that August 10th earnings call will confirm J-LEO contract.

averysmallbeing

>no progress in the actual satellite business. Objectively untrue, they've met their (admittedly revised) timelines for both of the last two batch shipments of satellites, by next month will have half of the number needed for beta service, and just landed a $1B contract to provide LEO service for Japan. 

Jealous_Bookkeeper20

The TSMC and Apple analogy is fair, but if Apple's unit economics get squeezed, they pass that pricing pressure right down to TSMC. If LEO operators are running on a 5-year treadmill and struggle to turn a profit, they'll squeeze component vendors on price or build in-house like SpaceX did with Starlink. Rocket Lab's Space Systems margins look great now, but customer concentration is the real risk. If the Space Development Agency or a couple of major defense primes scale back, that backlog shrinks fast. How do you model their long-term pricing power if the LEO operators start consolidating?

Clearsky_Beyond

B,but…J-LEO contract waiting…

Hartywoodlebart

The 5-year decay cycle actually works in favor of component suppliers, not against them. Constant satellite decay forces constellation operators into a continuous replenishment cycle, which turns component sales into highly predictable, recurring revenue rather than a one-off transaction. Furthermore, the risk of the customer base going bust is vastly overstated. Rocket Lab’s Space Systems backlog is heavily anchored by massive, multi-year government and defense contracts (e.g their major satellite manufacturing programs with the Space Development Agency) which are backed by federal defense budgets rather than speculative venture capital. Even on the commercial side, Rocket Lab sells standard, industry-essential subsystems like reaction wheels and solar cells. If one constellation operator fails, any competitor entering the market to take their place still has to buy those same standardized components. Since the assets sit on the operators' balance sheets, they are the ones absorbing the CapEx replacement and depreciation costs. Rocket Lab simply captures pure top-line revenue from the ongoing demand. They've also built a business model that decouples itself from the LEO replacement cycle. Thought HASTE Rocket Lab provides specialized suborbital launch services for the Department of Defense and defense primes to conduct hypersonic testing. These missions do not deploy satellites into orbit, completely bypassing LEO decay economics while securing highly stable, premium-margin government funding. So your point here about decay and contractor obselesence is moot. Through their interplanetary platforms (such as EscaPADE), and GEO satellites for space force. These sats operate in deep space do not suffer from rapid drag and decay cycles like LEO constellations. So you're either ignoring that aspect of their business or you're unaware of it. Finally, when Neutron comes online and by scaling up launcher capabilities to directly challenge heavy-use vehicles, Rocket Lab positions itself to profit from the sheer volume of global space transit, regardless of which individual satellite operators succeed or fail. neutron will taget the high margin market for constellation deployment with medium lift commercial and security payloads. You're conflating the suppliers expense for decay with the operators. When a satellite decays and de-orbits, the "obsolescence hit" is a depreciation expense that occurs on the operator's balance sheet. Rocket Lab does not own those satellites once they are delivered. For Rocket Lab, the operator's downstream obsolescence is just a trigger for a new sales cycle. Suggesting that you need to discount Rocket Lab’s margins for the operator's asset depreciation is like saying TSMC needs to cut its chip-manufacturing margins because Apple has to depreciate old iPhones. It makes no logical sense. Not to mention there are other revenue streams that RocketLab has acquired that currently don't rely on the on satellite decay at all.. maybe I'm biased 😅 but I really do have faith in the leadership at RocketLab. Embryonic space related companies are always found to have mental volatility. But I believe they know what they're doing, I believe they have a vision and I honestly think this is just the beginning. I can't change your mind, but I do feel it's fair to point out some of your logical contradictions and argumentative flaws. ..cheers

iShitBloodandCumShit

The comment section on every fucking flock camera article on Facebook 💀💀 Don’t get me wrong, from a LEO perspective they are a great tool. But maybe don’t put them pointing at fucking houses.

Weak_Tangerine_6316

Many points to be made here: * China and Japan are where SpaceX was with reusable rockets about a decade ago. China has a demonstrated ability to execute/improve quickly, so it likely won't take them a decade to match current Falcon 9 capability. BO is coming along as well, who knows what kind of cadence they'll build once ops are back up and running. Amazon LEO gives BO near limitless demand for years. * There are many other places SpaceX has advantages. Compare Raptor 3 with BO's BE-4. They produce about the same amount of thrust, Raptor 3 has a slightly higher ISP, but Raptor 3 is about 1/3 the weight, and costs 5-10% what BE-4 does to produce. Multiply that type of design/engineering/manufacturing advantage across the entire company. * SpaceX is very far along on Starship development. While not there yet, their track record and tests so far make it seem likely it will be operational soon. Much of the case for SpaceX's valuation hinges on its success and ability to drop launch costs by another 1-2 orders of magnitude. Seems plausible, but not yet proven. * The only thing that can really justify the valuation is quickly becoming a massive supplier of AI compute, along side continued expansion of the Starlink business. If Starship works as planned, asteroid mining likely becomes viable as well, but that feels to be a decade away. There is a lot between now and SpaceX becoming a significant enough AI player to justify their valuation. * Building out Gigafab. The long backlog of orders for EUV machines makes me question how quickly this can happen. * Getting launch costs low enough to make orbital inference economically advantageous. * Terrestrial data centres continuing to be difficult and costly to bring online. * Continued demand growth for AI compute at prices that can sustain the hardware and buildout costs. What if "good enough" models for most use cases can run on a $5k or $10k Mac Studio in 3 years. Will demand for the high end stuff in massive data centres continue? * Real engineering challenges around space based compute: making radiators hot, large, and light enough, running chips hotter for more efficient cooling, maintain high reliability due to lack of serviceability, radiation hardening.

ResponsibilitySea327

No one is "spending this much" as it compares to US spending on just about anything. But the UK, Germany, China and Japan are all investing heavily in data centers. Japan and China in LEO and edge space compute.

ResponsibilitySea327

100% disagree and I believe this is highly biased and wishful thinking. It also ignores what has happened in the past. Will some companies go bankrupt? Sure. And in many ways that is the ideal path for some of them. After all, what is better than having a tech roadmap and shit tons of capital assets without the encumbrance of debt? People think that a pull back just means that it all disappears. It doesn't, it just changes hands or changes shape. This isn't the horse and carriage, it is the automobile. Most of the auto manufacturers since 1886 have gone out of business, but yet is a huge industry (and Japan's top export). The amount of investment in LEO and AI data centers is mind boggling and not slowing. It is not just US centric. AI is here to stay and this is just part of the curve. Some early entrants may not survive, but in their evolution will continue on. We all know the next step is rationalizing service cost, but that will happen and just a side effect of rapid growth and adoption. Companies will figure it out. There is no doom and gloom picture except from those who have personal disdain for AI.

Jealous_Bookkeeper20

the big issue with the bull cases here is that people value these like software when they're heavy capex treadmills. LEO satellites have about a 5-year decay cycle. that means they have to replace 20% of their constellation every single year just to maintain basic service. it's recurring maintenance, not growth, which completely changes the terminal cash flow math once you run the replacement launches. how are you guys modeling the depreciation on these?

Aureliamnissan

It’s scaling was always a lie. The LEO internet thesis was that it provided low latency. That’s about it. Sure you could have higher download speeds because it is newer, but the main benefit was that the ping was potentially lower than existing cabled infrastructure. That basically only matters to traders and gamers. Everyone else in the boonies can use GEO internet with minimal differences. Starlink *is* better because it is newer and can handle mobile cases better, but there’s always been caveats with that as well. The problem is that starlink already scaled up to their near maximum user count for now. Theoretically they could onboard way more, but if you don’t need remote, mobile internet, then other options are generally cheaper and better for you, unless ping is a priority.

Bluitor

I agree mostly. Star hopper launched in 2019, so if they kept up a spacex cadence they are only 7 years behind. China has a smaller scale model so they just need to make it bigger so I'd say 4-5 years they could match where spacex is now. But in 4-5 years spacex will be launching 150 tons to LEO every fews weeks because they'll have like 9 launch towers.

AzureFantasie

To say that the Chinese reusable rocket threatens SpaceX currently is jumping the gun way too early, but at least it’s a F9 class rocket that reached LEO and was recovered. To say that the Japanese rocket here (barely 40 seconds hover time and 10m off the ground) threatens SpaceX, as the post claims, is downright laughable.

CharlesElwoodYeager

The biggest radiator ever put into space was the shuttle one at like 100m^2. 100kw, which like 10% or 5% of an actual datacenter, is 2 and a half times that over LEO. You'd need basically one starship per 100kw to put this thing into orbit. And then you'd need to solve orbital assembly, and then you'd need to solve 'MMOD sappin mah sentry' over about 750m^2 of radiator and solar panel. And oh, by the way, have you sized the battery for the eclipse? 36 minutes of 100kw, then size for depth of discharge loss, 70% ish, you need 90kwh ish of battery. For about 5% of an actual datacenter.

Icy_Jelly_315

And it's not fucking space. LEO is like climbing the highest mountain in your state and saying LOOK AT ME IN ORBIT. it's just a different bit of earth being filled up with junk

sorean_4

You are so confidently incorrect. The J-LEO is 1.9 billion dollars about 930 million coming from Japan’s government and Rakuten has to match this money with its own funds. The funds are destined for the equipment ASTS sales. Satellites, ground equipments, networking and space launch costs among few others that will comes from ASTS.

JayWhizz007

dude they just won J-LEO i wouldn't bet against ASTS. It is heavily shorted by the way which is not good to enter now

MegaWeinerFarts

we need a breakthrough that drastically reduces the cost to LEO. Granted resuable boosters is a big deal, but for a real space economy we need something better than chemical rockets

shadowalpha_ai

Many reasons. 1) Robots use way more memory than a lot of other devices do, and those are already being pumped out in crazy levels of production, about to get way way bigger. That demand is going nowhere anytime soon. 2) Orbital datacenters 3) Additional proliferation of AI driven devices, including consumer goods, local AI inference hubs attached to traditional internet infrastructure, LEO AI infrastructure 4) Chinese devices and parts are under intense scrutiny, and there's a good chance they'll be blocked from provisioning the US market. IMO it doesn't even matter if prices go down.

Any_Possible3003

Surprisingly it’s a lot more nuanced than 2 seconds of braindead pondering. For anyone that’s interested, there’s a few things that separate them from SpaceX or other competitors. 1). It was built on first principles for broadband direct to cell phones. Large phased arrays to compensate for the tiny antenna on cell phones. Current iteration are 2,400 sq. Ft compared to Starlinks 6 sq ft. Antenna array. I think v2 may be around 25 sq ft? They need starship to began launching those though. 2). Spectrum, ASTS will have lowband/midband and C-band layers. Starlink may eventually attempt to service Lowband but they will need larger arrays. Lowband spectrum penetrates much better through trees/windows etc. it’s an important piece of the puzzle. 3). Spectrum and partnerships. They go hand in hand, ASTS was just awarded 1 billion USD by the Japanese government to develop their sovereign shell through a JV with Rakuten. ASTS has access to a significant amount of spectrum through its MNO partnerships that a competitor could not just go out and buy. 4). Countries all over the world have been pretty forthcoming that they do not want a foreign company having control over their countries data. ASTS is bent pipe and all traffic is routed through carrier MNO network, Starlink is regenerative and all data is routed through them. This is a non starter for most of the world, which is why ASTS was the only company to apply for J-LEO in Japan. 5). Starlink also is a direct competitor with MNO’s in home broadband and have publicly stated their intent for a standalone mobile network, even if countries were done giving Starlink their data…MNO’s won’t be fine handing over their customers to a new competitor on a silver platter. ASTS has the better, 1st principles tech, and business model for d2c, IMO.

Unusual-Lie8889

Just remembered ASTS fanboys thinking the stock would be at 130+ after J-LEO contract and some morons bought at peak during overnight. I'm glad I could never reach this level of delusion.

jckorn85

I'm Aussie and I can tell you the government is mandating the Telcos they need to have LEO technology in their infrastructure. This is mainly for dead zone but emergency as well. Friend of mine works in the Telcos industry

Another_Smith_SC

Like the other guy said, the Japan J-LEO award is a huge benefit to AST and analysts haven't priced it in to their models yet.

IEgoLift-_-

**1.** “No broadband, the average user gets 0.1 to 1 Mbps.” Rigged denominator. You divide beam capacity by concurrently active users, not every possible user. DTC is intermittent supplemental coverage, someone in a dead zone making a call, not tens of thousands streaming at once in one beam. Every terrestrial network on Earth looks terrible under a simultaneous-worst-case denominator too. That scenario isn’t the service. The physics: throughput is Shannon-bound, and the driver is antenna gain. AST flies the largest commercial phased arrays ever built specifically to maximize gain to unmodified phones, which is why it closes a broadband link where small payloads close only a messaging link. And the proof is already public: \~98.9 Mbps demonstrated to an ordinary phone, plus voice and video calls across Rakuten, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon. The bear’s own worst case, one user in a beam, is exactly where AST shows broadband speed. **2.** “SpaceX targets 150 Mbps per user vs AST’s 200 per cell.” Three mismatches, each flattering SpaceX. Per-user vs per-cell manufactures a 1000x gap from mismatched units. Target vs demonstrated: 150 is a goal, not a result. MIMO vs non-MIMO: the 150 is a MIMO figure, while Starlink’s real-world DTC is non-MIMO at 2 to 3 Mbps (Musk claims \~5), and AST’s 98.9 is also non-MIMO. Match them, non-MIMO demonstrated to non-MIMO demonstrated, and it’s 98.9 versus 2 to 3, with MIMO headroom still in reserve. Correct all three and the conclusion flips. The strategy claim also misreads the model. AST sells through carriers, not to consumers against Starlink. Nobody picks “AST vs SpaceX,” they get satellite fill-in on their existing plan from whoever their carrier chose. And J-LEO just settled the sovereignty question where it counts: a G7 government picked AST over Starlink on exactly those grounds. Carriers and governments vote here, not shoppers. Same aperture physics, two consequences. Spectrum first. Low-band, sub-1 GHz, is the valuable stuff because long wavelengths penetrate buildings, terrain, and foliage where high bands get blocked. Serving it from orbit means forming tight, separated beams at low frequency, and beamwidth is set by aperture in wavelengths. At sub-1 GHz the wavelengths are long, so you need an enormous array to keep beams tight and non-interfering. SpaceX’s small payloads can’t: at low frequency their beams go broad and overlap, which locks them out of low-band and pushes them to higher bands that penetrate poorly. AST’s arrays are large enough to do it. Power second. Those same loose beams spill energy off-target, raising interference into terrestrial networks, and regulators cap interference. So SpaceX has to run reduced power to stay under the limit, which cuts throughput and coverage. It’s in the record: they petitioned the FCC for higher interference allowances and got a partial waiver, more than baseline but well short of what they asked for, and they operate under that ceiling. AST’s tight beams concentrate energy on target, so it runs full power without breaching the limit. So the aperture “cost” is actually two structural advantages a small-sat design can’t copy: AST uses the penetrating spectrum SpaceX can’t, and runs full power where SpaceX throttles. This isn’t abstract. J-LEO is a 700 MHz low-band program, which is why it fits AST and not Starlink. The low-band physics and the sovereignty win are the same fact. **4.** “They keep delaying, a delay is a delay.” Conceded: guidance has slipped about half a year, and that’s a fair knock at this market cap. But the cause decides the meaning. The delays are launch-driven, and the Blue Origin New Glenn failure is a launch-provider problem, not AST failing to build. Production is at BB37. The bottleneck is orbit access, not manufacturing, which is a very different thing from “the tech doesn’t work.” And the standard is applied selectively. SpaceX’s next-gen DTC has slipped hard and depends on Starship, which has its own public failures, so AST is arguably less exposed to an unproven vehicle than its main rival. RKLB’s Neutron has slipped repeatedly and takes none of this heat. Applied evenly, “no excuses” hits both harder than AST. And near-term it barely matters: upper-hemisphere coverage needs 45 to 60 satellites, production is at BB37, so that milestone lands even on the slipped timeline with years of room before J-LEO’s 2029 deadline. The delays hit the global ramp, not the coverage milestone the J-LEO award rests on. **5.** “Dilution is imminent, could reverse to sub-$20.” The balance sheet kills the framing. Cash north of $3 billion (about $3.5B at the last call, $3B being conservative), plus roughly $1 billion incoming from RAST to offset build costs. That’s not a company forced into an emergency raise, and the subsidy cuts net capex, so it means less dilution to build, not more. Conceded narrowly: capital-heavy firms raise over a long build, and some dilution should be modeled. But “imminent dilution, could crater to $20” describes a distressed, runway-short company, and $3B-plus in cash with $1B of subsidy incoming is the opposite. Dilution to fund a government-co-funded revenue asset from that position is not a desperate raise. And “a seller held it down for months” is just Rakuten’s orderly, pre-planned 10b5-1 sale, disclosed mechanical overhang, not proof the stock is controllable or the business weak. Volatility and a retail base are real. “Drops for no reason” is a claim about sentiment, not value. **6.** “Maxed-out satellites, one-trick pony, can’t improve.” Wrong on the facts. Block 2 BlueBirds are explicitly larger and higher-capacity, so the size ceiling is wrong for the roadmap. And improvement was never only about size: array design, beamforming, and spectrum efficiency all scale capacity, and AST’s onboard-processing roadmap targets roughly 2x spectral efficiency with no size change. “One-trick pony” cuts less than it sounds. AST is concentrated on the largest addressable market in wireless, direct-to-device for billions of existing phones, and focus on a huge TAM is a strategy, not a flaw. It’s also not single-product: the same constellation feeds defense and dual-use, IoT, and first-responder verticals. RKLB’s rockets and panels are real diversification, into smaller-TAM, different-margin businesses, so “diversified vs not” isn’t automatically a verdict either way. Different bets. **7.** The point the whole case misses: AST lets carriers kill money-losing towers. The “but can it stream video” framing misreads why carriers want AST. In many markets, operators are required to keep coverage in unprofitable rural and remote areas, running loss-making towers to meet the obligation. AST lets them meet it from space and retire the tower, turning a cost center into a satellite-served zone. That’s an opex and capex cut on top of new revenue, and it has nothing to do with per-user speed. It’s a core reason carriers sign, and part of why AST has demonstrated across Rakuten, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon. The bear grades AST as a consumer ISP. Its real customer is the carrier’s balance sheet. Bottom line. Points 4 and 5 are real risks worth modeling: execution timing and eventual dilution. The rest is the misinformation, the per-cell denominator trick, a SpaceX comparison that inverts once you match units, targets, and MIMO, the low-band and interference physics the bear skips, and roadmap errors. And the whole “must win consumer broadband or die” premise ignores that AST’s actual business, carrier obligation relief plus sovereign infrastructure like J-LEO, never depended on winning a streaming contest.

Swimming-Cupcake7041

Space internet/network, yes. Space AI/compute/storage, surely not. The cost and effort to put something in space and keep it there kills all margins compared to the same thing in a barn on ground. And then on top of that you have the radition/heat/cold problem. How can it even be justified? From a user point of view there's no benefit of having your stuff running in LEO compared to your closest DC. Or is there?

skunimatrix

Hell, I can barely get T-Mobile or ATT at the farms and they are 2 miles from an interstate.  STARLINK helped a lot and we used it in our airplanes until March when they put the speed limit in place.  If LEO has a decent general aviation offering we’ll ditch STARLINK in a second.  Right now we have the standby plan for traveling with the plane or down at the farms.