Last November, Elon posted about the sunshade concept, and then in August he posted again and responded to another message (links to PSI replies). While these posts are not yet connected to any other action that we are aware of, it is worth following.

SpaceX currently has more capability than any other actor to contemplate building a sunshade. From launch capacity, operational satellites, and the vertically integrated manufacturing facilities to support those things, the company is far ahead of its competitors. While this has been true for a while, several events in the past year have pushed the company even closer to sunshades.

In February, it announced its merger with xAI, and put forth a vision for the near-term future. “The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.”

This follows with an even more ambitious nod toward the further future. “Factories on the Moon can take advantage of lunar resources to manufacture satellites and deploy them further into space. By using an electromagnetic mass driver and lunar manufacturing, it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power.”

Then in May, through disclosures for the company IPO, we learned that SpaceX is in business with Anthropic to lease data centers, totalling $40 B over the next three years. Their business model includes building and operating increasingly large data centers. The technology and industrial resources needed to achieve this scale of data center is largely the same as the capabilities needed to build a sunshade. For this reason, we believe it is important to take Elon Musk seriously.

The Planetary Sunshade Institute advocates for civil society to conduct sunshade research transparently, and in the public realm, so that government is equipped to meaningfully engage with the topic. The governance capability needs to keep pace with the technological capacity.