The SpaceX IPO and all the emotion about Elon is making people argue so much out of emotions and hunches, so here is some figures of you to evaluate yourself
This is all for 1 gigawatt of AI compute
1) Cost of terrestrial AI deployment(excluding the chips)
Facility construction: $15b
Facility hardware(electric, cooling, HVAC, racks, etc): $2b
Power generation (onsite-owned): $3-10b
Total upfront cost (excluding chips): $20-$30 billion.
2) cost of Satellite AI (Using AI-1 satellite specs as announced recently):
Satellite weight: 2 tons
Compute capacity:120-150kw
Number of satellites required for 1 GW: 9000 (rounded up to account for lost satellites)
Starship capacity: 100-150 tons (50-75 satellites)
Falcon heavy capacity: 62 tons (30 satellites)
Satellite cost(excluding chips again) : current starlink mini is $200k, V3 is estimated at $1 million (including all the antennae) so I will go with $500k
Launch cost (current, not future):
Falcon heavy: $100mil/launch commercial pricing for 3rd parties.
Starship: $90 mil estimated internal cost
Starship (future resuable) Elon says $10m so I will go with $50m
Cost of launch 9000 satellites:
Falcon heavy commercial: 300 launches X $100 mil = $30 billion
Starship current cost (at 60 satellites a pop): 150 launches X $90 mil = $13 billion
Starship future = $7.5 billion
Cost of satellites (excluding chips): $4.5 billion
Total cost of deployment sats+launch for 1 GW of compute: $12-$34.5 billion
TLDR: the AI satellite business is viable using current technologies and extremely competitive if starship works out at even 5X the cost Elon estimates
PS: no, heat radiation in space is not an issue at all, that is just straight misinformation spread online by people who just want to dunk on Elon. The radiator surface would be less than the required solar panel surface, look it up