Elon Musk is doing what he always does: making aggressive capex moves and pushing up timelines.
SpaceX (SPCX) on Tuesday announced Starbase, Louisiana, a “high cadence” launch site in Louisiana, for its Starship rocket to haul up cargo like the company’s Starlink satellites and orbital data centers. SpaceX said Starbase will eventually be able to support “thousands” of Starship launches per year, targeting Earth’s orbit, the moon, and Mars.
What challenges could delay SpaceX’s orbital datacenter plans?
How will Nvidia partnership accelerate SpaceX’s AI satellites?
What is SpaceX’s Starbase Louisiana launch facility timeline?
Why are analysts bullish on SpaceX’s space computing prospects?
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said SpaceX will invest $100 billion to build the facility, with construction starting in 2027 and the first Starship launches targeted for 2029. Musk added that Starbase will “ultimately have over a dozen launch towers, enabling more than 30 Starship flights per day.”
SpaceX stock gained on Tuesday.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX)
In addition, the SpaceX CEO took to X to update the timeline for launching the rocket company’s first AI-powered satellites, which would eventually depart from Starbase, Louisiana.
“SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028,” Musk said in a post on Monday afternoon.
Musk’s post comes on the heels of yesterday’s announcement that SpaceX and Nvidia (NVDA) would be deploying Nvidia Vera processors “to accelerate the orchestration, code execution, and data processing that powers its next generation of agentic AI.”
The companies have worked together in the past and earlier this year announced that Nvidia chips would power SpaceX’s upcoming AI satellites, aka orbital data centers.
SpaceX in the past had said it would target 2028 for the launch of these satellites, but Musk’s new timeline pulls that forward to Q4 2027, with volume launches in 2028.
Wall Street is positioned for SpaceX to hit these timelines much later and is quite bullish on the prospects.
“From 2029 on, we expect SpaceX to pursue orbital compute towards ~75GW by the end of 2031 at a significantly cheaper cost than could be done on Earth,” JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. “We believe significant upside potential remains as the company quite literally builds out the next frontier.”
Musk has been known to issue aggressive timelines that subsequently aren’t hit. Look to past timelines for Tesla’s Cybertruck, the Tesla Semi, and the still unreleased next-gen Tesla Roadster.
Another key challenge for ramping up orbital data center deployment is how SpaceX will get the payload into space. Its powerful Starship rocket is slated to carry the satellites into space, but it’s still in testing.
Though the rocket had a successful test launch and release of some Starlink satellites, it still hasn’t reached the high-altitude orbit necessary for some satellite launches, and only the booster portion of the rocket has landed safely at the launch pad thus far.
Nevertheless, an updated timeline for orbital data centers is good news for SpaceX investors.
Interestingly, the news about SpaceX and its Nvidia partnership comes a day before Nvidia will release its highly anticipated quarterly earnings after the bell on Wednesday. Any hiccups in Nvidia’s outlook or performance in its AI and data center business could put significant strain on the tech and AI trade, as well as the broader market, which is still trading near all-time highs.
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/spacex-unveils-starbase-launch-site-in-louisiana-moves-up-orbital-data-center-launch-timeline-142539276.html
