Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is the latest to hop on the space-based data-center craze, which proponents say could solve the artificial-intelligence industry's huge demand for energy - and that skeptics argue is far easier said than done.
The space-exploration company on Thursday filed a proposal with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for what it called "Project Sunrise," a constellation of up to 51,600 satellites. Blue Origin said its satellites would communicate through optical links by routing traffic through its TeraWave system and other networks.
TeraWave is a satellite-communications service that Blue Origin unveiled in January to support "tens of thousands" of enterprise, data-center and government users. The company's efforts are separate from those of Amazon.com (AMZN), which Bezos founded. Amazon plans to create its own constellation of satellites, called Amazon LEO.
Blue Origin said Thursday that its designs for Project Sunrise's satellites are still a work in progress. The company also plans to revise its plan to mitigate orbital debris.
"The societal benefits of AI are fundamentally constrained by theavailability and affordability of the computing infrastructure that powers it," Blue Origin said in its filing. "Space-based data centers can help break this bottleneck."
Skeptics of space-based data centers have said the economics don't quite make sense yet. "While we envision a future where space-baseddata centers become physically feasible, they currently remainrationally improbable," Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wrote in a note to clients Thursday morning.
But Blue Origin argues that its New Glenn rocket will make space-based compute accessible at "previously unattainable" price points. A similar argument has been made by Elon Musk's SpaceX, a major rival that has made space-based compute a big selling point as it gears up for a potentially record-breaking public debut.
SpaceX recently asked the FCC to approve plans for a constellation of up to 1 million satellites, which could cost $5 trillion annually, according to MoffettNathanson analysts. Its plans rely heavily on Starship, a megarocket that SpaceX says will eventually deploy "millions of tons of mass per year" to orbit.
Both New Glenn and Starship are still being tested. The next, third test of Blue Origin's rocket is not currently scheduled, while SpaceX has pushed back the first launch of its third-generation Starship to at least early April. Musk had previously said the rocket would be ready by early March.
Nvidia (NVDA) is also working with several startups on space-based compute, including Starcloud and Aetherflux. And Google $(GOOGL)$ $(GOOG)$ has teamed up with Planet Labs $(PL)$ to carry out a pilot program, Project Suncatcher, with a test launch expected next year.
