AI moves to space in 30 months, claims Musk, but what does physics say?

“Mark my words: in 36 months, probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space.” Elon Musk said that on a podcast last week. He meant it literally. His $1.25 trillion plan to fold xAI into SpaceX rests on a single audacious claim: that fleets of solar-powered satellites, cooled by the vacuum of space, will soon beat every data centre on Earth for cost. The vision is coherent. The timeline is not. Musk’s pitch: Compute leaves Earth Musk has put the concept of ‘space GPUs’ at the centre of the merger story. He says the economics will flip fast once you combine three things that SpaceX already has: cheap lift to orbit, a…