Well, everyone, you can now submit a comment to let the FCC know what you think about SpaceX asking for 1 million satellites for "AI datacenters" whatever the fuck that means.
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@sundogplanets There's a walkthrough here: https://e-ratecentral.com/Resources/Educational-Information/Guide-to-Reading-and-Filing-FCC-Comments
@teresa_athome I tried this, but it only seems to work for documents in the ECFS database. This SpaceX filing is in the ICFS database, which requires registration and login to an FCC portal (which I’m not sure I feel comfortable doing). Ugh, this is so convoluted…
Link to filing in ICFS database:
https://fccprod.servicenowservices.com/icfs?id=ibfs_application_summary&number=SAT-LOA-20260108-00016 -
Well, everyone, you can now submit a comment to let the FCC know what you think about SpaceX asking for 1 million satellites for "AI datacenters" whatever the fuck that means.
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.pdf
Comments due March 6.
I am having a very hard time believing this is really happening. Fuck you, SpaceX, and fuck you, FCC. This is not regulation, this is a fucking joke, that will destroy our ability to use satellites for centuries.
@sundogplanets SpaceX is playig the "AI" buzzwork to get a rubber stamped approval for unlimited number of satellites which the government would look very bad if it rejetected since the Trump regime wants to play the AI casino game very much.
Once they have the approvals, they can start a garbage disposal service in texas where they send the gargage into those pre-approved orbits. (or any other stupid use of those satellite positions). And getting those approved would also mean others can't reserve thsoe orbits anymore because SapceX will have monopoly on them.
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Well, everyone, you can now submit a comment to let the FCC know what you think about SpaceX asking for 1 million satellites for "AI datacenters" whatever the fuck that means.
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.pdf
Comments due March 6.
I am having a very hard time believing this is really happening. Fuck you, SpaceX, and fuck you, FCC. This is not regulation, this is a fucking joke, that will destroy our ability to use satellites for centuries.
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social don't worry. This is not happening. Musk just wants money and attention. He can literally just tell lies and money will flow in.
Musk won't launch one million satellites. -
Well, everyone, you can now submit a comment to let the FCC know what you think about SpaceX asking for 1 million satellites for "AI datacenters" whatever the fuck that means.
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.pdf
Comments due March 6.
I am having a very hard time believing this is really happening. Fuck you, SpaceX, and fuck you, FCC. This is not regulation, this is a fucking joke, that will destroy our ability to use satellites for centuries.
@sundogplanets "unlimited number of satellites"
Soon our weather forecast will be predicting how many of those satellites will be falling down tonight.
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@teresa_athome I tried this, but it only seems to work for documents in the ECFS database. This SpaceX filing is in the ICFS database, which requires registration and login to an FCC portal (which I’m not sure I feel comfortable doing). Ugh, this is so convoluted…
Link to filing in ICFS database:
https://fccprod.servicenowservices.com/icfs?id=ibfs_application_summary&number=SAT-LOA-20260108-00016@SunnJax What a pain. The regular process is pretty easy. I haven’t run across this one before. (I have been lucky.) Something else to bring to the attention of my electeds. Thanks for the heads up.
There’s supposedly a way to comment via email if you request the form for instructions. I’ll update after I hear back.
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If somebody wants to venture into this, please test all steps.
The first one involves sending an email to ecfs@fcc.gov with "get form" and your email address in the message body.
The reply I got was trying to strangely gaslight me:
"Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:
ecfs@fcc.gov
Your message couldn't be delivered. The Domain Name System (DNS) reported that the recipient's domain does not exist."There seems to be a strange subdomain falstaff.fcc.gov involved. The attached error log says:
Diagnostic information for administrators:
Generating server: SJ0PR09MB11735.namprd09.prod.outlook.com
ecfs@fcc.gov
Remote server returned '550 5.4.310 DNS domain falstaff.fcc.gov does not exist [Message=InfoDomainNonexistent] [LastAttemptedServerName=falstaff.fcc.gov] [SA2PEPF00003023.namprd09.prod.outlook.com 2026-02-05T12:30:46.776Z 08DE6078A5284768]'This is boring stuff, but when your server tries to deliver mail, the first thing it does is look for the MX records for the recipient's domain.
It looks like they're using Microsoft to run their email system.
My first guess is that they're changing their mail servers, and somehow your message got stuck during the transition.
1/2
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This is boring stuff, but when your server tries to deliver mail, the first thing it does is look for the MX records for the recipient's domain.
It looks like they're using Microsoft to run their email system.
My first guess is that they're changing their mail servers, and somehow your message got stuck during the transition.
1/2
Then it looks up the numerical address of the mail server. That's working as well. I think that if you try again, it will work.
The caveat is that when you query a DNS server, the answer gets cached for a while. So you might have to wait for your server's cached copies of the data to expire. But the data that's live now is good.
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I appreciate any Americans that submit a complaint, but who exactly gave an American regulatory body authority over the whole of low Earth orbit and beyond?
Colonial theft.
@EricLawton @sundogplanets @PhoenixSerenity
or is it because they have authority over SpaceX as an American company - and the US already believes it can tell American companies what the can do in other countries.
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@sundogplanets let me marh this badly...
At a launch a second they could have that sucker up in months. At a launch every hour it'd take more than a century. At a launch a day millenia. Assuming of course one satellite per launch. That's just the getting to orbit bit. Fabbing the satellites might well take longer. After of course the lead time to ensure hallucinating chatbots are not on the worse granola.
@jamesb192 Yeah, I ran some very rough numbers earlier and I think with 30 satellites per launch and one launch per day it would take almost a century, which is in line with your figures.
Of course that was under an assumption that no failures or other reasons for replacement on-orbit would be needed for the period. Which is… unrealistic.
Problem is, I suppose, that in the current climate, we can't just assume "it's madness and makes no sense, and therefore won't happen".
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@sundogplanets How would a data center event work in outer space? Heat would build up. Unless I'm missing something and the idea is to have something super worse than regular DCs down here?
@kiri https://www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2025/12/11/the-dumbest-thing-ive-seen-this-week
And as an interested non-expert, I personally get the feeling that Matt is being more generous than the facts *should* allow, but at least he's showing his math and coming up with a conclusion of "dumb" and "stupid idea".
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I read an article about this, and there was a discussion section, and someone there was making this very argument that space is cold so cooling won't be required, which I thought at the time made total sense. But then someone else brought up the fact the ISS actually has trouble cooling itself, because while yes space is cold, there is so little matter around, it remains very difficult to dissipate heat. So now I'm not so sure.
@bit A thermos bottle works by having a near-vacuum between whatever you want to keep warm or cold and the surrounding air. This works well because vacuum is a very good insulator.
Space provides a better vacuum than anything we can easily create on Earth.
Getting rid of heat in space is friggin' *hard*.
As for "space is cold", temperature is a property of matter, and space is notably lacking in matter, so it's arguable whether space even *has* a temperature per se.
