The ability to scale is a skill.

The thing you're missing is that you're assuming these countries can just "choose" to have their own version of Starlink. As if previously they just chose not to do it, but now they've chosen to do it. The reality is they've been trying as hard as they can the whole time, and they just can't do it. The fact that they're huffing and puffing now doesn't change that. They can't simply "choose" to do this, anymore than you or I could "choose" to play in the NBA. In other words, this is a skill issue.

"Millions of people living and working in space, as long as we don't have to internally fund the initial crew vehicle."

I do think this might be the most important philosophical question to be discussing though. The idea that the purpose of humanity is to be a biological bootloader is a philosophy with a similar range of implications as the beliefs of any other religion. I.e. coming to this belief is not unlike a Christian "finding God" or "being saved."

What happens to The Great Launch Supply Crunch™️ when Google buys Rocket Lab or Relativity and takes all that future launch supply off the market for internal use?

🚨 BREAKING 🚨: Starship would have to be the best rocket ever built in order to achieve its goal of being the best rocket ever built.

Within the past year, we've gone from "there might be data centers in space" to "there will be data centers in space" to "basically everything we send to space will be a data center".

Well, I'd like to see ol Elon Musk wriggle his way out of THIS jam! *Elon wriggles his way out of the jam easily Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

Can tiny China rock SpaceX?

Doubtful. They will simply move the goalpost or deny that it's really happening / deny that it's practically useful. They'll claim that the satellites being launched are not actually functioning as a data center to a meaningful degree. They'll argue that it's all for show, that it's performative to pump the stock price. If you're waiting for these doubters to finally "see the light", you're going to be waiting a very long time. How long? Well, I think we can look to Starlink as an example. IMO the legitimacy of Starlink in the eyes of the broader public (and including skeptics) changed when Starlink was brought into Ukraine at the start of their war with Russia. Prior to that, I think most people still weren't seeing the value. Then all of a sudden, it goes from "Better than Nothing Beta" to "literally altered the geopolitical landscape". I suspect it will take something like that for orbital data centers to finally break through the stubborn viewpoint of the skeptics. At that point they will switch to arguing regulatory or monopoly-based concerns. Flipping from "this isn't really happening/working" to "this is too much power and we need to regulate it".

Satellite communication itself was available in some form or another for decades prior to Starlink. People thought they understood it and its limitations. Some of the people who understood satellites the best were the most skeptical of Starlink. They made seemingly valid arguments like "LEO satellites will be over the oceans for ~70% of the time, so they'll never be profitable because most of the time they won't be serving paying customers." Or "LEO satellites will deorbit within less than 5 - 10 years, so the system will never be profitable because you keep having to replenish it." In both of those examples, the initial premise is correct! The physics argument was technically correct! The Starlink satellites really *are* over oceans most of the time. And LEO satellites really *do* need to be replenished frequently. And yet the conclusions from those arguments were totally incorrect. Despite the physics objections being correct, the overall argument was incorrect! Is it possible that SpaceX's use of femtocells may differ from the use you've seen over the past decades? Perhaps drastically different, in the same way that Starlink is drastically different than, for example, DirectTV or other older satellite systems? Is it possible that the "physics" statements being made by you and the T-Mobile / AT&T execs are completely correct, while their overall conclusion about Starlink is incorrect?

"Hey grok, provide a realistic example of the innovator's dilemma. Don't make it subtle. Make it a super obvious, straight-forward example of the innovator's dilemma. Like if you were explaining to a child what the innovator's dilemma looks like in practice." Grok: "Sure, here's an on-the-nose, textbook example of someone cartoonishly falling victim to the innovator's dilemma."

🎯 Bingo. The same smug dismissiveness. TBH the Arianespace guy has more of a valid excuse for being so wrong. At the time when he said "reuseability is a dream" we hadn't seen as much evidence of SpaceX being such a revolutionary company. There was certainly promise, but less real-world evidence. But today? There's a ton of evidence that when SpaceX says they're going to do something, you should take it very seriously even if it sounds crazy. It's ok to be skeptical, but there is absolutely no excuse today to write-off SpaceX's plans as unrealistic fairytales. We already did that for 15 years and we saw how that went. It's like arguing against the iPhone. If you were arguing against the iPhone in 2007, that's understandable. It's hard to see the revolution before it happens. But if you're arguing against the iPhone in 2026? You're a lunatic. Obviously the iPhone is incredible and we have 15+ years of proof. That's what this guy is doing when he is so dismissive of SpaceX today. He's making the argument that was reasonable 15 years ago but is completely absurd today. The fact that there are still people today who are this dismissive is inexcusable. It's willful ignorance. This guy is not just skeptical, he's dismissive and condescending. This will not age well.