First posted on Instagram
Early Wednesday, November 4, 2026, Elon Musk posted on X: "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now."
Shortly afterward, he also posted: "Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time 🤷" The posts were widely described as sarcastic in tone.
The posts came after Democrats won both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott lost to Democrat Gina Hinojosa, and James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton in the Senate race. Both Hinojosa and Talarico had raised concerns about data centers: Hinojosa called in July for a moratorium on new data-center projects until stronger regulations were in place, and Talarico said data centers are driving up utility bills and promised more regulation. Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars backing Republican candidates this cycle.
Behind the joke is a real orbital plan. In January 2026, SpaceX applied to the Federal Communications Commission to launch and operate an orbital data-center system of up to one million satellites, and the FCC accepted the application for filing in February. SpaceX's prospectus says it expects to begin deploying orbital AI compute satellites as early as 2028, with a goal over time of 100 GW of compute to space per year. Musk said on October 31 that orbital compute deployed per month probably exceeds terrestrial compute around the end of 2028.
The idea still faces major hurdles. An April assessment by the Government Accountability Office noted that computing hardware does not cool well in space, along with radiation damage, collision risk and launch and replacement costs.