SpaceX IPO Puts Elon Musk’s ‘Extreme’ Ownership to the Test

The rocket maker debuts on Nasdaq today under a wave of criticism about Musk’s near-absolute control. It’s how the company has worked from the start.

Brian Manning encountered SpaceX’s culture of extreme ownership from day one as an engineer at the rocket maker. After a one-hour onboarding session a decade ago, he got his first assignment: Design a small part by the next day. “The way I looked at it is having very clear responsibility, autonomy, and accountability,” says Manning, who aced the task and spent about two years at the company. “Rather than hiring people and telling them how to do it, they give people full ownership to make things happen.

Why Orbital Data Centers Are Harder Than Silicon Valley Thinks

Solving the heat problem is only part of the battle. The other significant challenge in low Earth orbit is ionizing radiation, which affects the computing hardware itself. Today’s satellites typically use radiation-hardened processors, which are very reliable but also much more expensive, and they perform poorly compared to commercial off-the-shelf processors.

A standard rad-hard chip doesn’t have the processing power to run a modern large language model (LLM). As a result, satellite operators aspiring to launch a data center have no choice but to make a risky compromise: to use hardware meant for terrestrial use. In order to achieve the necessary compute density, orbital data centers must use the same Nvidia H100s or Google TPUs found in terrestrial server farms. The problem is that these chips are “soft” targets in space. High-energy particles can flip bits in memory or cause “latch-ups” in logic that fry the circuit.

Space-Station Tech Pivots to Cool AI Data Centers

Mikros Technologies and Carbice Corporation are adapting technology originally created for the International Space Station to solve heat-dissipation problems in AI data centers. Mikros CEO Drew Matter and Carbice CEO Baratunde Cola told EE Times in exclusive interviews that increasing chip heat-emission issues in AI data centers are driving demand for liquid cooling and new thermal interface materials (TIMs), such as the carbon nanotube parts made by Carbice.

Inside SpaceX’s Orbital Economy: AI Data Centers And Wireless Power

SpaceX’s potential $2 trillion future may extend far beyond rockets. Forbes highlights how Starship’s heavy-lift capability could unlock large-scale orbital infrastructure, from Starlink expansion to AI data centers and space-based solar power. With the space economy projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, investors are watching whether SpaceX can evolve into an infrastructure platform in orbit. Proposed concepts include solar-powered AI compute satellite networks, wireless energy transmission, and industrial facilities in low Earth orbit. However, technical, regulatory, and commercial challenges remain significant, with some orbital data center concepts still likely a decade or more away.

GlobalFoundries chips being made to survive space

GlobalFoundries revealed recently that it has developed two different ways to protect its chips when they are used in outer space, in what is called radiation hardening, which shields components from radiation. And it is working on capabilities with two of the largest defense contractors: BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman Space Systems.