SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell on data centers in space: “There is an expense to put data centers on the ground. You have to buy real estate, and as soon as someone finds out a supercompute center is going in, real estate goes from $3,000 an acre to $180,000 an acre. The time lag is incredible. Permits and licensing are pretty stifling. People are talking about generators in three years.” “We need compute now. The demand is insatiable right now. People need compute now. We need it now. So why data centers in space? We own launch. We have great launch capability, and that path is very well known. The real estate in space is infinite. It’s free.” “The cooling is there. The radiator looks at deep space, the coldest thing ever out there, so free cooling. You can put satellites in orbit that always face the sun. We’ll be making our own solar panels too. We’re building a factory outside Austin.”