The New Space Race: Powering AI or Perpetuating Exploitation?
Same playbook, different decade: the proposition of outer space as the answer to artificial intelligence's voracious energy appetite rehashes a familiar narrative. Historically, grand technological solutions often deflect from pressing ethical considerations and redistribute environmental burdens rather than resolving them. This concept, often presented as novel, dates back to Peter Glaser's 1968
patent for a solar power satellite system, highlighting how old ideas are repackaged for new crises. The push for space-based solar power, transmitting energy wirelessly to Earth, ignores the immense carbon footprint and resource depletion inherent in launching and maintaining such infrastructure. Each launch requires tons of fuel, and the manufacturing process extracts rare-earth minerals with
devastating environmental and social costs. For instance, a single Falcon Heavy launch consumes hundreds of tons of propellant, a significant contributor to atmospheric carbon, a detail consistently downplayed in future-gazing articles. This extraterrestrial energy quest also diverts attention from terrestrial energy inefficiencies and the monopolistic tendencies of the AI industry. It is a
classic move, creating a new frontier for exploitation instead of addressing systemic issues. The narrative mirrors past imperial ambitions where distant lands were plundered for resources, now simply scaled up to orbital dimensions. Instead of genuine sustainability, this becomes another chapter in the endless pursuit of profit, underwritten by techno-solutionism, where accountability is