S8 Ep603: 15. Guest Bob Zimmerman reports on the private space industry, highlighting SpaceX’s flight records and plans for orbital AI data centers. He also discusses startups in South Korea and Germany facing technical challenges during their launches.,,, (16)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
15. Guest Bob Zimmerman reports on the private space industry, highlighting SpaceX’s flight records and plans for orbital AI data centers. He also discusses startups in South Korea and Germany facing technical challenges during their launches.,,, (16)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor. |
| 0:16.9 | Bob Zimmerman. |
| 0:17.9 | He keeps the website behind the black eye on satellite constellations. |
| 0:22.0 | This is a big one. But Bob, it's a startup, 88,000 satellite data center constellations. |
| 0:28.0 | That data center that looks to be something new. What is it? What do they want to do? |
| 0:32.3 | All right. So, yeah, this is a story that's been in the news, but there's been, I've been trying to figure out and understand what's really going on here. |
| 0:40.2 | So we have AI, and AI requires gigantic computer centers to accumulate, to hold and maintain and then use data by AI. |
| 0:51.3 | And those data centers are big. |
| 0:53.8 | They take a good real estate footprint. They use a lot of |
| 0:57.5 | electrical energy. They require water for cooling because that energy is hot and you have to cool |
| 1:03.6 | the equipment, air conditioning as well. And there are other environmental concerns that people |
| 1:08.7 | have about them. But to build these data centers, therefore you've got to get the real estate, you've got to get the environmental approvals, and you've got to get the local community, you agree with the electrical cost. |
| 1:18.0 | It's going to raise your electrical rates. |
| 1:20.0 | And so what a lot of the big tech companies that are building AI are considering now is to put the data centers in orbit instead. Because the thinking is there's no real estate, there's no environmental issues, there's no local opposition. You just put them up there and send the data back and forth to Earth. Under this idea, we've already had Elon Musk propose a million Constellation |
| 1:46.6 | data center proposal for SpaceX. |
| 1:51.0 | He's already proposed that. |
| 1:52.9 | Of course, he's got a good track record of putting up lots of satellites that are |
| 1:56.5 | actually used by a lot of people, one of whom I know is John Batchelow, Starlink. |
| 2:03.3 | But now we have another startup called StarCloud, which is filed an application with the FCC to launch its own |
| 2:11.4 | constellation with 88,000 satellites. This is a lot smaller than SpaceX's proposal, but nonetheless, it's a big |
| 2:20.0 | constellation. Now, who is Star Cloud? What's interesting about this is that this is a company |
| 2:25.3 | that has only launched one small demo satellite once. It tested the operation of its computer processor in orbit. It plans a larger |
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