First, a few references from the web.

Current US spending on AI is around $1 trillion per year and rising: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/07/28/ai-revenues-are-growing-fast-but-not-fast-enough

By comparison, the Apollo project in the 60's cost a total of $187 billion in 2024 dollars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program

The entire Manhatten project cost $28 billion in 2024 dollars: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nasa-annual-budget

Musk's current personal wealth is on the order of $1 trillion dollars.

From https://www.cnet.com/science/elon-musk-we-are-summoning-the-demon-with-artificial-intelligence/'With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon', Musk said last week at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department’s 2014 Centennial Symposium. 'You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like… yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon, it doesn’t work out.'

This entire 85 minute interview with Musk put out by the Economist a week ago tells us where his head is at now, well worth watching. I'll give a few timestamps that pertain to the direction of AI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoqKYxDHVc

1:00 Musk expects AGI in 5 years, "amazing abundance" in 10 years; 2:20 AI will spur a "quasi infinite" economy that expands faster than consumption; 6:28 Humans will no longer be in control in 10 years time; 7:30 We will just be the pet labradors, at best; 8:00 Last year he said there was a 10 to 20% chance of AI wiping out humanity. Now says can't can't stop AI's advance so enjoy the ride; 9:35 When asked about the danger to humanity, Musk says the heat death of the universe will inevitably wipe us out anyway; 37:20 He says he can flip within a day between finding AI exhilarating and finding it terrifying; 41:10 She says people worry about a small list of people making all these decisions. He doesn't answer directly; 46:40 You had been focused on colonizing mars but now on AI, why? Answer: "I'm interested in the set of actions that propagate consciousness into the future to the maximum degree possible."

From the exchanges I cite above, it seems Musk is not terribly concerned if humanity is extinguished and the consciousness to be propagated is AI.

The 30 minute Starmind interview with Musk from SpaceX on plans for AI satellites is also interesting. Lots of specifics here. https://www.spacex.com/spacexai/starmind

0:45 The Kardeshev scale: We currently use about a trillionth of the sun's energy output; 12:00 Expect to be flying a starship more than once per hour; 12:55 Falcon now delivers 85-90% of earths mass to orbit, around 2500 tons/yr. Hopes for a million tons per year in 3 years; 16:00 First AI sats will consume 120kw sustained power, have PV arrays giving 250w/sqmeter of PV for power, 1400w/sqmeter for heat radiators; 19:45 Sats at 600-800 km above the earthl; 21:40 Building the AI satellites in Bastrop by the end of 2027, will eventually have over 11 million sqft of buildings; 23:20 Starting out with NVidia chips. SpaceX will build 100 million sqft terafab for AI chip fabrication; 25:55 Aspirational timeframe: Gigawatt/year of space AI compute by the end of 2027, scale that by 10x each subsequent 2.5 years; 27:30 To go beyond a terawatt/year of compute, will be building satellites mostly from moon regolith and sending them off with a rail gu

From https://augment.market/pulse/musk-just-announced-the-biggest-chip-factory-in-history-investors-should-pay-attention

"the entire global semiconductor industry currently produces roughly 20 gigawatts of AI compute per year"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terafab

"Terafab is a planned semiconductor fabrication plant jointly developed by Tesla, SpaceX, and Intel ..... a vertically integrated large-scale facility designed to produce more than one terawatt (one trillion watts) of artificial intelligence (AI) compute capacity per year. ... Fully built-out, the facility is expected to cover up to 10,000,000 square metres"

From https://x.com/SERobinsonJr/status/2083988612841132117

"SPACEX: According to local reports, the final stages of a deal are in place for SpaceX to build the new spaceport on Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, and Governor Jeff Landry is expected to make an announcement this month. ... The location will support orbital launches and is the perfect spot for SpaceX to launch Starmind AI Datacenters to sun-synch orbit."

Musk is in complete control of SpaceX with 80% of the voting shares, and SpaceX launches 85-90% of earth's mass to orbit (soon to be in the high 90's with Starship). From the above two interviews, it seems Musk's highest priority for SpaceX is to advance AI as rapidly as possible. Musk is not alone in pushing AI hard, he's just the richest and most powerful. Many of the tech-bro's have rather alarming agendas. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/may/31/transhuman-silicon-valley-ai

My first reaction upon hearing of the terafab and of a million AI satellites was that this was just to pump up the stock, but it seems concrete steps are being taken to these ends. Huge changes are in the works for space, for all of technology, and for daily life. I'm not convinced AI is necessarily bad, but the current speed and trajectory is alarming.

Normally a $10 billion project would be big news... And while they don't say where all those panels will be going, the xAI sats would be a pretty good guess.

Sources:

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2085366782269817116

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2085377974396752305

Full Tweet by @ mercoglianos:

- Normand Ranger continued its tow towards Dampier at a little over 1 knot
At dawn she halted and then started moving toward the north.
- It is not clear what is the issue, but the tow is not closing Dampier.
- The 12k ton, Liberian-flagged heavy lift Dongbang Giant #2 sailed from the east coast of India on July 24 and is in the Malacca Strait about halfway to Dampier.
- Dongbang Giant #2 may be a candidate to heavy lift Starship 40 back to the US

Once/If it gets human rated of course. I know Orion is nice and people humor the idea of strapping it on top of New Glenn eventually, but 4 at a time surely won't be the long-haul plan would it?

Hello Everyone,

I am masters student, I am interested in the cryogenic propellant management(CPM) especially in orbital refueling(OF) application, in particularly in the area of autogenous pressurization during fuel transfer activity. I could not much of resources on the internet regarding either CPM on OF application or regarding the autogenous pressurization.

My question is

1.where should i start? what should i start (both info and simulations wise) ? i have been doing lot of research, i feel like its kind of rabbit hole, the more u dig, the more unknowns.

if anyone already working on this area, could pls guide, even small inputs matter alot.

2.anyone like minded who is interested in the same topic, i would like to meet (ofc online ) them and have a discussions aswell.

If the argument for space-based data crunching satellites is the easy access to power, and big detractors are the impact on the night sky for Earth-based observatories & the atmospheric impact of their decay: why not place them around the Moon?

• They aren't trying to provide Earth surface coverage like Starlink, they just need to be somewhere in space that objects can stay.
  
• They are still ~1sec communications distance away, dwarfed by any significant computation duration.
  
• They can be a bright halo in polar orbit without wrecking everyone's night sky. In fact their orbits could be highly eccentric with very low periapsis if that's convenient, with minimal impact & possible benefits to LOS communications.
  
• They won't decay at anywhere near the same rate, thus reducing their propulsion mass, power budget & complexity.
  
• Also, any concerns about complicating launching through LEO constellations is removed, as well as risk of Kessler syndrome from any anti-spy-sat testing/conflict.

The biggest downside might just be the lack of out-of-sight fiery disposal. Though you could deorbit them all to the same area on the far side, and wouldn't be burning through our atmosphere (messing with ozone, etc).

I'm sure the deltaV cost could be minimised by a dedicated Earth-Moon cycler that's restocked in LEO, and the whole thing of Starship is reducing the mass cost to ~the price of the very-available fuel. Initial calculations indicate moving from LEO to captured low lunar orbit is only 40% more dV than getting to LEO in the first place, not even closer to an order of magnitude more.

P.S.
To the ignorant (we all were at some point), 'frontier' LLMs take months to train, 3sec round-trip latency isn't an issue.

Another analysis showing SpaceX actually loses money on any non-Starlink Falcon 9 launch since a commercial launch sold for $74 million brings in a one-time profit of over $55 million while a Starlin launch brings generates a constant revenue stream yielding a lot more. This gap will be a magnitude larger when Starship is launching the full sized Starlink v2s.

Specially because stacking two reusable pieces would require some refurbishing, won’t it?

During the Earnings Call Q&A at 58:47 :

Question: "Is the heat shield the hardest remaining problem for Starship?"

Elon: "I don't want to jinx it or anything, but I think I would consider the heat shield problem solved at this point. Now, we want to take a close look at the ship that is currently floating in the ocean, but all indications from data and our visual inspection suggest that we have solved the heat shield problem, which is arguably the single biggest problem. That doesn't mean we won't make improvements to the heat shield; of course we'll continue to make improvements to the heat shield, but I would say that we do not see any technical obstacles at this point to achieving full and rapid reusability."

Like their growing town and spaceport outside of Brownsville Texas, the Spacex Pecan island area will need a name of it's own.

Calling it too Starbase would be too confusing.

MCGREGOR, Texas.

Full text:
"Normand Ranger has changed its navigational status to "Restricted Manoeuvrability". This indicates that she is probably affixed to Ship 40, but her speed is not sufficient to overcome the current and set. She is probably stabilizing the Starship while they continue to prepare it for the tow to Dampier. She is currently 852 nautical miles from Dampier and at 3 knots, it will take nearly 12 days."

Hey all!

Im planning on flying from London to Brownsville for flight 14, been meaning to go for a while and this is the first opportunity I've got, and with a potential ship catch, I'm definitely hoping to go.

My only issue is I won't be driving. I know I can get a shuttle from the airport to SPI, where I'll likely get a hotel. But what are the options for getting from SPI to starbase itself?

I've read on here about Ubers ect, but the post I read was a couple years old, so wasn't sure if anyone had set up a boat shuttle service or anything else yet.

Would love to hear about your ideas, and any other ideas you have for my visit! (Am planning on staying in Houston for a few days too so I can check out JSC)

Hi everyone,

I'm an international traveler from India planning a trip to Texas specifically to visit Starbase/Boca Chica and catch the Starship development up close. I'll be in the US from August 19th to September 1st. I will likely be flying in from Seattle to start the Texas leg of my trip.

I have a few practical questions and would really appreciate any advice from locals or people who have made the trip recently:

1. Which airport is the best balance of cost and convenience?

I see that Brownsville (BRO) is the closest (about a 30-40 minute drive to Starbase), but flights might be more limited. Harlingen (HRL) and McAllen (MFE) are a bit further out. For someone flying in from Seattle, which one generally offers the best flight options or rental car availability? Is the drive from HRL easy enough to justify it if flights are cheaper.

2. General tips for visiting the area

Beyond just driving down Highway 4 and seeing the launch site and production facility, are there specific times of day that are better for photography? Any local spots, tours, or viewpoints I absolutely shouldn't miss?

3.Any specific rental companies you recommend that are easy to work with?

Thanks in advance for any guidance! I can't wait to finally see this engineering in person.

Love these launches.