Asked when orbital compute becomes cost-effective compared with ground data centers, Rama Afullo gives his launch-cost figures for the break-even point and says larger rockets have to work first.
…data about what was going to happen in LA a lot quicker than the typical human typical sort of lay person was, right? And a few of them changed their policies just before those fires hit, right? So, you can, it's a little bit dark, right? But so, you can have some control in that respect as well.
…not just technically viable. I think we all believe you'll be able to do it. Elon, Google is working on it. Everybody's kind of working on this vision at the same time, Star Cloud, a bunch of folks. When does it actually become cost-effective? Is there a curve that you guys are watching for this?
I think for us, for satellites, it's really cost-effective because we don't build our own hardware. Sure. Right? So, we've got that advantage. But if I think about the macro scale and the rest of the environment, there's a few things. You are correct, right? So, right now, I guess with Starship, the estimation is that they're down to about $1,000 a kilogram, right? To put the pillows up into orbit. And in order to get parity with terrestrial data centers, you've got to get about $100 a kilogram. So you're right about on the money there, right? But for the typical, for any sort of typical satellite operator who's trying to put their stuff into orbit right now, they're paying $15,000 a kilogram for Rideshare, right? So we are taking the best base case, but eventually we need to bring everyone along for the ride. Now, in order to do that, there's a few different things that have to happen. You need to have significant efficiency in terms of your launch capacity. So Starship needs to work. Blue Origins New Glenn needs to work. Anyone who's building a massive vehicle to transport more satellites into orbit, like those folks who can put up much larger…
need to figure out how to catch it right now. So I think Elon's doing Starship 15 in the next week or two. And if he catches it, then we're off to the races.
Yeah, with the chopsticks, right? Yeah.
Chopsticks. Pretty easy to do. It's like catching a fly with chopsticks. It's possible. I may need to be a kung fu master to do it right now, but I think he kind of is best described as one. All right. So let's take a look at the demo you have of how this might work. I think people are interested…
