Sam Altman responded to Elon Musk calling him a scammer by accusing Musk of "selling public market investors on short-term space datacenters." This criticism aligns with what many experts—including competitors building space data centers, Google's orbital compute team, and engineers who've modeled the economics—already believe: space data centers won't be viable until rockets are much cheaper and satellites can be manufactured at scale.
SpaceX's orbital data center plans, meant to perform AI inference tasks, are a key driver behind the company's reported $2 trillion valuation. While analysts tout the potential for orbital compute and AI capabilities, experts point out that fundamental challenges remain unsolved.
Starship's reusability is crucial to making the business case work. Even if SpaceX successfully recovers both stages on upcoming test flights, operational reusable flight remains years away. SpaceX itself acknowledged during its IPO roadshow that Starship may not achieve full reusability in the near term, potentially requiring new second stages for each launch.
While SpaceX could technically launch a data-processing satellite next year, the ability to manufacture and deploy them at scale is likely a 2030s problem, not a near-term opportunity.