Thursday, March 26, 2026

26: Grok

SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell Aims to Put AI on the Moon Its enormous dimensions allow it to carry 50 or more satellites to orbit—a big plus as SpaceX seeks to expand its Starlink internet constellation from its current 9,400 satellites to 20,000.............. On Feb. 13, Starlink passed the 10 million-customer mark, with its reach expanding beyond the commercial sector and into conflict zones around the world, including Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. As artificial intelligence expands, the company sees a place for a similar constellation of satellites serving as data centers in space. SpaceX envisions linking the satellites by laser, giving them the power to process information as a single distributed brain. ........... “We just recently gave a request for FCC licensing for up to a million AI satellites,” says Shotwell. “I’m surprised that didn’t get more news. .......... SpaceX’s FCC application made a number of arguments for its proposed mega-constellation. Energy efficiency and carbon reduction were a big part of the pitch, as terrestrial data centers gulp enormous amounts of power and millions of gallons of coolant water. Placing AI satellites in orbits that keep them constantly charged by solar panels and constantly cooled by the infinite heat sink of space mitigates this problem. .............. Ultimately, Shotwell envisions the satellites being made on the moon. "The convergence of AI and SpaceX and what we're doing—data centers in space, mass drivers on the moon, producing AI satellites on the moon," she says. "I would be disappointed if we didn't have a settlement on the moon and [are] building a manufacturing facility on the moon within 10 years. Hopefully half that." .................. Getting a million satellites into orbit before that point would be a heavy lift, literally, but in an interview on the Cheeky Pint podcast, posted to X, Musk suggested launching Starship with the regularity of airplanes taking off from airports, reaching

10,000 launches per year.

................. in a Feb. 8 post, Musk announced a change. “SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years,” he wrote, “whereas Mars would take 20+ years.” ........... The city may be new, but the relationship between Musk and Shotwell, its most important players, is a long-standing one. Shotwell studied mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, receiving both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree there, and in 1988 took a job at the Aerospace Corp. in its El Segundo, Calif., offices, working on integrating private-sector resources with military and other government operations. In 1998 she left that position and joined Microcosm, a rocket company in El Segundo. Four years later, she met Musk through a colleague who had left Microcosm to join SpaceX. They were introduced in the SpaceX offices, and Shotwell was immediately impressed by Musk—but less so by how his company was organized. ................. “I shook his hand and blurted out that he needed to hire an in-house business developer (he had someone contracted to do this at the time),” she wrote in an email to TIME. “When I got back to the office I got a call from his assistant asking me to come interview for the new VP of business development job.” ............... “I love working for Elon,” Shotwell says. “He’s really quite funny. ​​He has said many times that he would like to die on Mars, just not on impact. He also refers to Mars as a fixer-upper planet.” .............. “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA,” he posted. “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.” ............... Then, too, there was Musk’s tumultuous tenure as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and his subsequent falling-out with President Trump, during which he trolled Trump on X about the disgraced and deceased Jeffrey Epstein. The value of Tesla, Musk’s publicly held car company, took a pounding, with share prices falling 36% from January to April 2025. ...................

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