[mitjam]

Interesting that nobody mentioned SAR in this thread, yet.

SAR benefits from space compute by reducing the strain on downlinks (pre-process, detect in space). A large-ish (think 6k sat) constellation of much bigger sats (2-2,5 ton) than current Starlink sats can run inference on board, distribute load to nearby sats, and enable full round-the-clock surveillance of the whole world.

The nominal compute capacity is in ballpark range of a modern AI data center, but it's only about 20% used on average due to duty cycles. An indestructible, global eye.

The big Starship launch vehicle is perfect platform to bring them into orbit, can maybe bring 40 at a time into orbit, so 150 launches for 6k. Maybe even fewer sats are needed, depends mostly on electrical efficiency of the components.