Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.
reshared this
Kristian Thy
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Dubious Blur
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to Dubious Blur • • •Nicovel0 🍉
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •fedops 💙💛
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •with outdated technology because they failed on the 4680 cells, and with now canceled supply contracts:
electrek.co/2025/12/29/tesla-4…
Apparently they are using up surplus 4680s in model ys now:
autoevolution.com/news/tesla-q…
@dubiousblur
Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%
Fred Lambert (Electrek)Tony Hoyle
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •And the announcement timed after he appeared in the epstein files.
Now we're talking about this BS instead..
reshared this
Charlie Stross and Madeleine Morris reshared this.
George B
in reply to Tony Hoyle • • •@tony
Don't know about you but I have not stopped talking about him begging to go to pedo Island (and it seems being rejected the majority of the time)
Fazal Majid
in reply to George B • • •Charlie Stross reshared this.
Graydon
in reply to Fazal Majid • • •@fazalmajid Well, that, probably, but also "power broker".
The Epstein files function to identify the de facto real power structure. (As he saw it, but considering how long he kept what running, he can't have been too far off.)
(It also identifies the help and the wannabes.)
@gbargoud @cstross @tony
Charlie Stross reshared this.
polypunk
in reply to George B • • •The hell, I toolk this as a plot element in @bitterkarella 's latest gag?
Argh. I'm gonna hide under a rock...
@cstross @tony
George B
in reply to polypunk • • •@bitterkarella @tony @polypunk
This email exchange particularly but there are at least 2 others I've seen (one of which looked like he actually made it to the island)
masto.nyc/@gbargoud/1159955385…
George B
2026-02-01 13:10:55
Hot Mess Moto
in reply to George B • • •@gbargoud @bitterkarella @tony @polypunk Wow. “Hey guys I wanna come party on pedo island!” “Nah man, you missed it, so sad”
As a nerd who’s gotten quite accustomed to living on the outer fringe of the Cool Kids Klub, this dialog feels hauntingly familiar.
Still gross, but also pathetic
Konosocio
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Mathias Hasselmann
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Bruno Nicoletti
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •bituur esztreym
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Pierrette
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Oh
Did he ?
Daniel Swann
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Chris
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Dizzy
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Knud Jahnke
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Taran Rampersad
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •it's the 'put it in a box and sell it' paradigm, where neither the box nor what goes in it can exist.
He, like the 🍊, depend on the masses who lack learning. Not education: learning.
In the most Twainish of ways.
Attorney Pat Weber
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Fazal Majid
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to Fazal Majid • • •S38
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I thought latency was still an issue.
@fazalmajid
Didthat
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Lucien
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •OldGeek
in reply to Lucien • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to OldGeek • • •Ray McCarthy
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •But you only need a tiny fraction of the size of Starlink for maritime & aeronautical mobile and it's garbage compared to fibre.
Fibre is far more sustainable.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Ray McCarthy • • •@raymaccarthy @oldgeek @lucien The point of starlink is low latency, which means low orbit. Which in turn requires lots of them to ensure there are no gaps in coverage. (And now they're working on satellite-to-satellite high bandwidth laser mesh networking to increase capacity.)
I think you underestimate the scale of aviation and shipping, not to mention railway transport.
Ray McCarthy
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@oldgeek @lucien
No, I don't because I was RF R&D in an ISP with fibre, mobile, Fixed Wireless and Satellite. They also had datacentres.
Railway is better served by Cellular.
Obviously in LEO you need a load to have continuous coverage, but to do the equivalent of rural fibre or cellular for trains you need orders of magnitude more.
Even cellular is being done badly due to too big cells and regulatory capture. I've dealt with the Irish regulator, Comreg.
Su_G
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •#elonMusk
Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Data centers on orbit is the stupidest idea ever.
Perhaps even more stupid than letting a remote LLM control your personal computer 🤦♂️
GhostOnTheHalfShell
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Consider for a moment, though that the real money available to the stock market is with the very largest institutions and the wealthiest people basically Elon Musk‘s class.
People with too much money and nothing else to do with it
You can bet they will also manipulate the federal government into just handing them cash supposedly to do all this crazy stuff kinda like all the money that’s flooding into starship that completely ignores contracted objectives
Cress
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •S. Lott
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Lightfighter
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Graeme 🏴
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Or maybe grok predicted it.
He possibly even believes it himself, he's so full of it, it's hard to tell.
Allpoints
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •the thing is, the big money knows it's BS or, at least, doesn't care if it's BS. They'll get in early, ride the hype wave and then try to cash out before it all falls apart.
"The stock markets are a way for everyone to participate in owning a company and promote growth." Is nonsense. The markets have become casinos and are disconnected from the economy.
Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I remember when he claimed his rocket would be on Mars by 2025 and everyone who doesn't know about Space believed him because he's nothing more than a huckster, selling Science Fiction as fact and Journalism not bothering to look beyond the hype.
This man, who was SO keen to visit the Paedo Island....
#ElonMusk #Space #SpaceX #Hustlers #Grifters #ClanOfPaedophiles
Scale Theory
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •But there is a way, figured it out. If "elon" wants the secret then it will cost him the trillion the "board of directors" (doge) .. paid him. 300,000,000 would get a tax refund of $3,333.33
mausmalone
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Melissa
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Oberon Ohana
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I've been thinking about that. I ran across this today, and thought Musk might be able to work it in to his pitch:
weidai.com/black-holes.txt
I_give_u_worms
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Gracchus Babeuf Bourguignon
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •isn't Starship becoming less and less useful as they keep 'iterating' it's development?
That giant cargo capacity keeps on dropping.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Gracchus Babeuf Bourguignon • • •@dgold Starship's first stage works fine (and has even re-flown), engines work fine (ditto). The problem is the upper stage design and the push for full reusability. If they throw away the stupid heat shield and make it a one-shot they could settle for a cheap disposable upper stage with monstrous payload capacity, and they could build it *right now*.
Once they had a 200 tonne payload HLV flying reliably, resuming incremental progress towards reusability would be uncontroversial.
Molly in Missouri
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •RejZoR
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •bellegraylane
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Bornach
in reply to bellegraylane • • •@bellegraylane
Musk merged Xitter with xAI to justify its high valuation to investors as an AI company now.
The same crap with Tesla being rebranded an AI robotaxi and humanoid robot company.
So makes sense to pull the same trick with SpaceX to gullible investors. That it's really an AI company so that SpaceX can afford to bail out Tesla when it buys all those unsold Cybertrucks.
Won't be surprised when Neuralink is touted as an AI company next
Oggie
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I still keep trying to think of any reason, at all, to put a data center in orbit. Obviously musk is going for stock but Nvidia also said something about this a year ago ( or was it someone else?).
It's literally the dumbest possible idea to the point where I tried to figure out if relativity helps at all since time would move faster (short answer - not nearly enough).
Heat, power, size, latency, repairability - there's genuinely no upside
It's a weird one
Very Human Robot
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •He's already massively reduced the price with space x (for starlink) but it may be that doing it again will be harder
The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉 • • •@ApostateEnglishman "None of the big ideas ever materialize" except the launcher with the payload of the space shuttle at $12M/flight that is *more reusable* than the shuttle ( 8 day turnaround between flights! 50 reuses per booster and climbing!) or disrupting the car industry by making EVs sexy. Or the low orbit comsat cluster.
Most of his bullshit evaporates on close inspection or goes wrong—but enough of it works to keep everything afloat.
(Shun anything he says about software, though.)
crispy branzino ☭ (freezer burn arc)
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to crispy branzino ☭ (freezer burn arc) • • •The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I mean, yeah. I stand partially corrected. Enough of it works to keep the hustle alive. On the other hand, how many failed launches has SpaceX had? How many potentially fatal design flaws do Teslas have? The list goes on and on.
Next we'll have humanoid robots that occasionally decide to go on killing sprees, or explode. Or are so easy to hack remotely that owning one is essentially inviting every cybercriminal and spy agency into your home to follow you around and take notes. 🤷🏻♂️
Charlie Stross
in reply to The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉 • • •@ApostateEnglishman You ask about failed SpaceX launches: turns out Falcon 9 has launched 606 times with 603 mission successes. 3 launch failures total, none in the past 11 years. It's *ridiculously* reliable compared to any of its rivals.
(Falcon 1—discontinued—was a buggy prototype; Starship is trying to get past that.)
(Tesla is not going to give us humanoid robots, not beyond showroom rigged demos targeting the investors' wallets. And I'm NOT having one of those brain implants, no way!)
Jack William Bell
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •My rules for brain implants:
1. I will not alpha or beta test; in fact I think waiting for v3.25 is probably for the best
2. Must run Open Source software *not using any dependencies requiring a Package Manager*
3. Must not require *any* kind of 'cloud' to operate, must work fine without a network connection, and must be locally configurable
4. You know what? Even if it meets rules 1 to 3 I'm still not too hot on the idea…
Charlie Stross reshared this.
Tom Bortels
in reply to Jack William Bell • • •@ApostateEnglishman @jackwilliambell
Brain implants are and were dumb on their face.
It turns out we have several excellent brain interfaces available and honed over millions of years of evolution - our eyes, ears, hands, voice, and a bunch of more subtle ones like touch and balance. They are intuitive, built-in, and free. And none of them are permanently invasive, which saves all sorts of biology issues.
The only real use-case for any sort of implant is where you have no alternative - the pacemaker comes to mind. The rest are someone trying to sell you something you don't need or want.
HighlandLawyer
in reply to Tom Bortels • • •There's also the option of external devices which communicate directly with the brain, no hole in the head required.
Jack William Bell
in reply to HighlandLawyer • • •@HighlandLawyer @ApostateEnglishman @tbortels
Then the rules still apply. If it can change my brain state? I will have a difficult time trusting it. In truth? I sometimes distrust my own senses.
Human perceptions are imperfect and brain-mediated. Ever look at anything and simply not see some detail on it until it's pointed out for you? Ever hallucinate? Not smell a stink because you got used to it?
We get ALL information via lofi, low-trust channels. We cannot trust our lying eyes.
HighlandLawyer
in reply to Jack William Bell • • •Decarte's demon
MidgePhoto
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@ApostateEnglishman@mastodon.world
The innovation wasn't the cars.
It was implementing a transport _system_
Now once there is a system of a supply network for recharging, and vehicles to recharge, other people will do it, and eventually as commodities and better.
The thing with Spacex wasn't launches and missions, it was a transport _system_.
Now, what is the complete system being floated?
David Penfold
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴🧡✊🏻✊🏿
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴🧡✊🏻✊🏿 • • •John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴🧡✊🏻✊🏿
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Ruxbat! 🍉🦇
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Paul_IPv6
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I'd be interested in finding out if Scott Manley got anything wrong here.
His take, as I understand it, is basically (1) the physics makes it complicated but not non-doable, and (2) can't be profitable now but may well be so within the foreseeable future -- making it likely that whoever gets there first, even before it's profitable, stands to make the usual absurd amounts of money (especially if orbital access is never properly regulated) once it does become cheap enough for it to be profitable.
- YouTube
www.youtube.comjb
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle Libertarian orbital CSAM storage and generation is not a great argument in a bad idea’s favor.
@cstross
Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to jb • • •@jb I don't approve of capitalism occupying Earth orbit; my point was that (at least according to Manley, and what I do understand of physics and orbital mechanics) it's not implausible that what the Muskrat is doing here is actually sensible from a capitalist standpoint.
His whole existence is a grift, and he needs to be stopped, but this particular part of it seems far less of a con than (e.g.) the "cybertruck".
@cstross
Charlie Stross
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle @jb Tough luck: all we've got in orbit today is capitalism, plus a couple of government-funded puppet shows showcasing "space science" while paying huge back-handers to corporations.
This is the reason we can't have nice things. (I prefer the term "crapitalism" to "enshittification", but you get the picture either way.)
Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Indeed, I know -- it's where we are now.
Perhaps not too late to stop it from metastasizing, but it's going to be a hard battle.
@jb
Charlie Stross
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle @jb
Capitalism is a self-limiting problem.
(Whether it limits *us* at the same time is an open question for the time being.)
αxel simon ↙︎↙︎↙︎
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •that is what he does. He promises things, puts people he employs in a positon of trying to make it work, doesn't deliver, and the cycle starts again.
And some people chose to believe that *this time* it will be true.
Nicole Parsons
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Elon Musk very rarely actually builds what he promotes.
He is a traitorous money laundering conduit for petrostate despots.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
businessinsider.com/elon-musk-…
washingtonpost.com/technology/…
cnn.com/2025/11/19/tech/saudi-…
npr.org/2025/05/15/nx-s1-53985…
Even his investors like Larry Ellison, Putin, & Alwaleed bin Talal recognize his utility in corrupting elections for the richest fascists on the planet.
Musk facilitates mass financial frauds.
That's it, that's all he does, defraud.
1/
Photos show Elon Musk with Jared Kushner at the World Cup final
Havovi Cooper (Business Insider)Nicole Parsons
in reply to Nicole Parsons • • •2/
Musk's List of "Failure to Deliver" frauds:
1. Man on Mars
2. Hyperloop train
3. Robotics
4. xAI achieving AGI
5. Flying cars
6. DOGE 'efficiencies'
7. Lunar tourism
8. No covid
9. Candy
qz.com/elon-musks-worst-predic…
mashable.com/article/elon-musk…
Musk's actually delivered:
1. The largest data breaches in US history
2. Joined the military industrial complex
3. A fossil fuel funded fascist alliance
4. Kleptocracy
5. Can foment far right riots with a single tweet
6. Mass hate campaigns for Nazis
Everything Elon Musk promised in 2025, but didn't deliver
MashableDavey
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •this applies to every company that mentions data centres in space.
Most tech "journalists" seem hesitant to ask basic questions about this shit because what if they start having to ask basic questions about everything. Sounds like a lot of work!
Mark T. Tomczak
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •The most compelling argument I've heard for putting datacenters in space (in the "didn't immediately discount it as a stupid idea but took some time to engage with it" sense) was from Scott Manley, notorious fan of everything space-related, and even he concluded that it only makes sense as an end-run around terrestrial regulation (i.e. it's a stupid and expensive idea but in the grand scheme of markets it may be cheaper than "buying enough politicians to steal a community's water rights out from under them so you can get the permits to build on land").
Which... Yeah, when that's the forcing function, maybe we tech folk should sit and have a think about the entire project.
rk: it’s hyphen-minus actually
in reply to Mark T. Tomczak • • •Like, we already have trouble keeping things cool in space and there’s also the whole “space is a deadly laser” radiation thing. I really can’t imagine how there’d be any benefit to putting a data center in space. Like, at all.
Mark T. Tomczak
in reply to rk: it’s hyphen-minus actually • • •Exactly. It's literally a "This is a stupid idea and the only reason we do it is we were forbidden from putting it on Earth" kinda thing.
As I said at one point or other, to paraphrase myself, "Sure, there's no convenient cooling and radiation will scramble your data, but just think how much CSAM you can store out of reach of any terrestrial law... Until you try and download it and they bust your ass the moment it hits a radio dish!"
VHG 🇪🇺🇺🇦
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Erik Bosman
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Martin
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Tom DB 🦣
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Duckbilled Plattypus.
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •CC_FL_IT_GUY
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Mastodon Migration
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •