Different category of doubts. It's unreasonable to say starship can't work in a world where the Saturn V did work.
For datacenters in space to work, they have to solve a bunch of unsolved problems and be more economical than datacenters in earth.
For datacenters in space to work, they have to solve a bunch of unsolved problems and be more economical than datacenters in earth.
Where I think you're correct is that typical AI data centers require a LOT of cooling, and to achieve this at scale would require enormous radiators. So large that it's hard to square the business case given current launch costs. I've read a lot of research in this space and it looks like the much more realistic use cases (at least at first) will be sub-processing. Meaning processing data already in space. These could be telemetry, Starlink, tracking, telescopes, logistics, military, GPS, weather, deep space missions, first-response, alerts, etc. In particular, applications which require lower latency.
There are also other applications which are less cost sensitive. For example, applications which might be banned on Earth, or at risk of espionage, attack, or intrusion.
If we want to make typical AI data centers in space to be economical, we need launch costs to drop to under $200/kg. Interestingly, [Starship could reduce costs down to $67/kg.] Even lower with >9 launch cycles. (https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/rocket-developers-used...) This would make the business case *extremely* attractive.
Dissipating that much heat in the first place would be a first, you also need a butt ton of power so maybe you can shade your giant radiators with giant solar panels, but all of this needs to unfold from something launch-packaged.... AND be cheaper than just plugging them in on earth.
We're still a few years away, but I suspect this is going to happen fast, starting with the edge/low latency compute.
Most of the doubts were economical as well. Saturn V was extremely expensive, its per-unit cost could be expressed in still-human-readable fractions of the entire US GDP. Starship should be several orders of magnitude cheaper while providing more capabilities.
I don't doubt Starship, BTW. Great project.
Tough problem, however it is notable that after SpaceX, there are now several other companies with similar plans, including Google: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/technology/google-suncatc...
One interpretation is they're all delusional. Another is that Musk showed the way and others now see it too.