在知道要发射什么之前，先预订发射

每个太空公司要做的第一件事，就是预订他们能订到的第一个发射机会，在他们造出要发射的东西之前，甚至可能在他们还不知道要发射什么之前。预订发射对太空公司来说是一个非常好的强制功能。所以我们公司在 2024 年 1 月 1 日成立，1 月 2 日就预订了第一个可用的 SpaceX 拼车发射，然后我们说，好吧，那枚火箭上一定会有什么东西。我当时还不完全确定会是什么，但肯定有什么东西会在上面。

First thing every space company should do is book the first available launch they can, before they built the thing that they're going to launch, before they probably even know what they're going to launch. Booking a launch is such a good forcing function for a space company. So we founded the company January 1st, 2024. January 2nd, we booked the first available SpaceX rideshare launch, and we were like, okay, something is going to be on that rocket. I'm not 100% sure what it's going to be at this point, but something is going to be on there.

听起来对所有软件公司也是同样的建议。他就是会不断发布、不断发布。一样的事情。

Sounds like the same advice for all the software companies. He's just going to keep launching and launching. Same thing.

欢迎回到 Light Cone 的又一期节目。今天我们请到了 StarCloud 的联合创始人兼 CEO Philip Johnston。StarCloud 正在太空建造数据中心，以解决 AI 在地球上造成的能源瓶颈。今年早些时候，他们由 Benchmark 领投融资 1.7 亿美元，并在 demo day 后仅 17 个月就成为 YC 历史上增长最快的独角兽。Philip，欢迎来到 Light Cone。

Welcome back to another episode of the Light Cone. Today we're sitting down with Philip Johnston, the co-founder and CEO of StarCloud. StarCloud is building data centers in space to address the energy bottleneck that AI is creating here on Earth. Earlier this year, they raised $170 million led by Benchmark and became the fastest growing unicorn in YC history just 17 months after demo day. Philip, welcome to the Light Cone.

非常感谢你们的邀请。

Thanks so much for having me.

那么首先，为什么要在太空建数据中心？

So to start off, why data centers in space?

我们很快就遇到了在地球上建设新能源项目的限制。所以通过在太空建设，我们可以获得几乎无限的、低成本的太阳能。当然，还有其他成本，比如发射成本，而发射成本实际上正在迅速下降，你知道，随着新的运载火箭投入使用，Falcon 9 项目和 Starship 也即将问世。这就是我们在太空建数据中心的原因。

So we are very quickly running up on constraints on where we can build new energy projects terrestrially. And so by building them in space, we get access to this almost unlimited low-cost energy in the form of solar. Of course, there are other costs like the cost of launch, and the cost of launch is actually very rapidly trending down, you know, with new launch vehicles coming online, the Falcon 9 program and Starship on the horizon. And so that's the reason we're building data centers in space.

你是怎么想到这个主意的？我觉得这不是人们通常会想到的那种典型想法。

How did you come up with the idea? It's not sort of like the typical idea that I feel people come up with.

我之前在麦肯锡工作了几年，与各国政府航天机构合作，我能看到发射成本正在迅速下降。实际上在 2023 年初，我随机决定在一个周末去德克萨斯州的 Starbase，那里正在建设 Starship 发射项目，甚至是在首次发射之前，当时没有多少人关注。我看到他们正在建设巨大的产能。他们在建设两个 Starship 超级工厂，设计目标是每天生产大约三艘 Starship。而且因为 Starship 是可重复使用的，在三到四年的时间框架内，这可能导致我们进入太空的能力提升数千倍。于是我开始思考，好吧，让我们把时间快进。如果发射成本比现在低 10 倍，发射能力比现在多一千倍，那什么会变得有意义，而目前没有意义？于是我开始回想小时候记得的一些科幻概念，比如天基太阳能，在太空有巨大的太阳能板，把电力波束传下来。基本上，是的，我联系了一些航天行业的朋友，又通过他们认识了其他人，开始构思，如果发射成本比现在低得多，什么会变得有意义？

I'd actually been working, I was with McKinsey for a few years working with the space agencies of different governments, and I could see that the launch cost was very rapidly trending down. And actually in early 2023, I decided randomly on a weekend to take a trip down to Starbase Texas, where they're building the Starship launch program, even before the first launch, and not many people were paying attention back then. And I could see that they were just building enormous capacity. So they're building these two Starship gigafactories. They're designed to produce something like three Starships per day. And because Starship is reusable, you know, on a sort of three or four year time frame, that could lead to us having thousands of times the capacity to get things to space. And so I started thinking, okay, let's just run the clock forward. If the launch cost was 10 times lower than it is today, and the launch capacity was maybe a thousand times more than we have today, what would make sense that currently doesn't make sense? And so started thinking about some of the concepts from sci-fi that I remember as a kid, you know, like space-based solar where you have these huge solar panels in space, you beam that power down. And essentially, yeah, just reached out to a few folks I knew in the space industry and got connected with a few others and started ideating on, okay, what would make sense if the launch cost was much lower than it is today?

我很好奇，在这个过程中，当你思考人们可以在太空建造什么时，有没有其他想法浮现？

I'm curious, are there any other ideas that occur to you during this process when you were thinking of what people could build in space?

有，太多了。我们确实考虑了太空制造，这方面有很多。我们看了小行星采矿，你知道，显然 YC 有 AstroForge。我们看了太空酒店。我们基本上看了任何在发射成本比现在低很多的情况下可能变得有意义的东西。

Yeah, tons. I mean, we definitely looked at manufacturing in space, and there's a lot. We looked at asteroid mining, and you know, obviously YC has AstroForge. We looked at space hotels. We looked at basically anything which could make sense if the launch cost was a lot lower than it is today.

那为什么数据中心是最好的选择？

And how come data centers was the best choice?

数据中心作为第一件事非常合理，因为你不需要让产品再入大气层。像小行星采矿、太空制造或太空酒店，这些都需要非常昂贵的再入过程。最初，我们实际上开始做的是天基太阳能。巨大的太阳能板，然后把电力波束传下来，这个概念我觉得是 60 年代的。甚至阿西莫夫在 40 年代就写过。天基太阳能的问题在于，从太空到地球的传输过程中，你会损失 95% 的能量。所以在公司头两个月，我们做的就是这件事。我们当时叫 Lumin Orbit，就是因为这个原因，轨道中的光度。我们在想，好吧，一旦我们把电力传下来，我们会用它做什么？即使在 23 年，大多数新能源项目都是为数据中心建的。所以我们想，好吧，无论直接还是间接，这些电力都会进入数据中心。让我们重新算一下这些数字。最初，我们算过数字，知道天基太阳能的发射成本盈亏平衡点是多少。我们得出的数字大约是每公斤 50 美元。然后我们重新计算。我们说，好吧，让我们花一个月时间弄清楚，要让太空数据中心达到盈亏平衡，发射成本盈亏平衡点需要是多少。我们得出了一个更接近现实的数字：每公斤 500 美元。我们认为这就是目前的发射成本盈亏平衡点。于是我们迅速将公司转向了这个方向。

Data centers makes a lot of sense to be the first thing you do because you don't need to re-enter a product. So with things like asteroid mining or manufacturing in space or space hotels, they require this very expensive re-entry process. Initially, what we actually started doing was space-based solar. So huge solar panels and then you beam that power down, and it's a concept from I think like the 60s. Even Asimov in the 40s was writing about it. The problem with space-based solar is you actually lose 95% of the energy in transmission from space to Earth. And so for the first two months of the company, that was literally what we were doing. We were called Lumin Orbit because of that reason, luminosity in orbit. We were thinking, okay, once we get that power down, what are we going to be using it for? And even back in 23, most new energy projects were being built for data centers. So we were like, okay, well, either directly or indirectly, this power is going to go into data centers. Let's rerun those numbers. So initially, we'd run the numbers to know what's the launch cost break-even that makes sense for space-based solar. And we'd come to a number of like $50 a kilo. So then we rerun the calculations. We were like, okay, let's spend a month figuring out what would the launch cost break-even need to be to make data centers in space break even. And we came to a much closer to reality number of $500 a kilo. And that's what we think currently that the break-even launch cost is. And so then we rapidly pivoted the company towards that.

那么，Philip，你在 2025 年 11 月发射了 StarCloud 1。那是一个真正激动人心的时刻。你能带我们回顾一下当时的情景吗？

So, Philip, you launched StarCloud 1 in November of 2025. And that was a real emotional moment. Like, can you walk us through what that was like?

是的，我的意思是，那太不可思议了。先给大家介绍一下 StarCloud 1。我们设定了这个发射日期，你知道，是 18 个月后，我们最初开始做的事情相当不起眼，比如我们要搭载一些 Nvidia Jetson 芯片。这些芯片以前在太空飞过，我们打算在上面尝试一些新的工作负载。是的，所以是 ADI 过来说，不，我们需要做一些比那酷得多的事情。我们最终在上面放了五块 GPU。其中两三块来自 Nvidia，两块来自 ARM。但最有趣的是这块 Nvidia H100。我们做了一些疯狂的事情，比如，你必须让它经历热循环，而我们没有时间预订真空室，热真空室，但我们需要知道，好吧，如果我们加热这个相变材料再冷却，再加热再冷却，它会不会导致什么开裂？所以在必须发货的那天凌晨 5 点，我们通宵工作，Ezra 就像把这个东西浸在冰浴里冷却。

Yeah, I mean, it was incredible. So just to tell people a bit about StarCloud 1. So we'd set this launch date, you know, 18 months in the future, and we initially started with something quite unimpressive, like we were going to fly some Nvidia Jetson chips. They've been flown in space before, and we were going to try and do some new workloads on there. Yeah, so it was ADI that came on and said no, we need to do something way way cooler than that. And we actually ended up putting five GPUs on there. Two or three from Nvidia, two from ARM. But the most interesting one was this Nvidia H100. We did some crazy things, like for example, you have to put it through thermal cycling, and we didn't have time to book the vacuum chamber, the thermal and vacuum chamber, but we needed to know, okay, if we heat up this phase change material and cool it down, heat it up and cool it down, is it going to crack anything? And so at like 5:00 a.m. the day we had to ship it down, working through the night, and Ezra like dunking this thing in an ice bath to cool it down.

天哪。

Oh my god.

然后我们把它从冰浴里拿出来，我说，你确定电子设备没问题吗？他们说，先别担心这个。

And then we pull it out the ice bath and I'm like, are you sure it's going to be fine with the electronics? They're like, don't worry about it yet.

完全没问题。他们把它从冰浴里拿出来。然后我们用吹风机之类的加热它，融化所有蜡，或者用热风枪，然后再把它浸回冰浴。说实话，它能工作真是个奇迹。

It's totally fine. They pulled it out the ice bath. Then we had these like hair dryers to heat it up and melt all the wax, or like hot air guns, and then we're dunking it back in the ice bath. It is a miracle that it works, to be honest.

你们就是能做成事。

You can just do things.

你们就是能做成事。是的。这是作为初创公司能做的事，因为我们确实从一家大型承包商那里拿到过做 StarCloud 1 的报价，他们说 7500 万到 1 亿美元，而我们做整个 StarCloud 2 包括发射只花了 200 万美元。

You can just do things. Yeah. This is the kind of thing you can do as a startup, because we actually had a quote from one of the primes on what it would cost to do StarCloud 1, and they said $75 million to $100 million, and we did the whole of StarCloud 2 including the launch for $2 million.

嗯。

Yeah.

所以，是的，在发射前，我们拍到了最不可思议的分离视频。我想我们现在就播放它。

So yeah, leading up to the launch, we got the most incredible separation video. I think we're going to play it now.

StarCloud 1 分离确认。

StarCloud one separation confirmed.

所以，在部署过程中，有一半时间它会处于地球阴影后面，你什么都看不到。另一半时间，它会在不背对地球轮廓的情况下部署。所以，我是说，这是我见过的最完美的部署视频。今年 GTC 大会上，Jensen 走上台时播放的就是这个。他身后五层楼高的屏幕上播放着 StarCloud 1 的分离视频。

So half the time as it deploys, it will be behind the shadow of the earth and you don't see anything. The other half of the time, it will deploy not into the silhouette of the Earth. And so I mean, it just is the most perfect deployment video I've ever seen. And this was played by Jensen as he walked on stage at the GTC conference this year. This five-story-tall screen behind him playing the StarCloud 1 separation video.

太棒了。

Amazing.

嗯，所以，不，看到它部署是最不可思议的感觉。

Um, so no, it was the most incredible feeling seeing this deploy.

团队当时在哪里？你们是不是都……

Where was the team for this? Did you all...

我们带了整个团队去。是的。StarCloud 1 发射时团队只有 12 人。所以我们带了整个团队去佛罗里达，还有大约一百位朋友、家人和投资人。我们一些团队成员带了家人和孩子去，那真是非常美好的一天。我们会发布一个幕后视频，展示那次发射中的一些家庭时刻。

We took the whole team down. Yeah. There was only 12 in the team at the time of StarCloud 1 launch. So we took the whole team to Florida, and we had like a hundred friends and family investors. Some of our team brought their family and kids down, and it was a really nice day. We're going to release a behind-the-scenes video of some of the family moments in that launch.

从火箭升空到卫星部署，再到你给它通电并确认它真的能工作，这中间花了多长时间？

How long was it from when the rocket lifted off until the thing deployed, until you powered it up and were able to verify the thing actually worked?

是的，它升空了。我们都在所谓的“香蕉看台”上，那是阿波罗时代著名的看台，但当时是半夜。所以大约午夜升空，然后凌晨 1 点看台关闭，所有人都得坐大巴离开。我们当时想：“哦，我以为我们能看部署呢。”然后我坐在出租车后座，看 SpaceX.com 的直播。我简直是在说：“天哪，它在部署了。我不敢相信它在部署。”嗯，然后大约花了 12 小时建立首次联系，这其实还不错。通常至少需要 24 小时才能建立首次联系。然后是大约两周的调试期。我们遇到了很多软件问题要解决。嗯，比如整个卫星每 2 小时重启一次。发生的情况是 20 个不同的故障触发器中的一个被触发，但我们不知道是哪一个。而且我们至少每 1.5 小时才能有一次地面站过境，可能更长。所以我们不得不手动关闭每一个，重新打开其他所有东西，然后等待地面站过境来确认是哪一个。所以那花了大约 3 天才解决那个软件问题，然后两周后我们开始调试并开启所有不同的载荷，然后我们训练了第一个模型，运行了第一个版本的 Gemini，我们在轨道上做了第一次模型微调，对卫星图像做了第一次高功率推理，诸如此类。

Yeah, so it lifted off. We were all on what they call the banana bleachers. It's famous from the Apollo era, but it was in the middle of the night. So it lifted off at around midnight, and then at 1:00 a.m. they closed the bleachers and everyone had to get on a bus and leave. And we're like, "Oh, I thought we were going to be able to watch the deployment." And then I'm sitting in the back of a cab, watching the live feed on SpaceX.com. Literally, I was, "Oh my god, it's deploying. I can't believe it's deploying." Um, and then it took about 12 hours to make first contact, which is not bad actually. It usually takes at least 24 hours to get first contact. And then it's like a two-week commissioning period. And we had a whole bunch of software issues we had to work through. Um, like it kept the whole satellite restarting every 2 hours. And what was happening is one of 20 different failure triggers was triggering, and we didn't know which one it was. And we can only get a ground station pass every at least every hour and a half, maybe longer. And so we had to manually turn off each one, turn back on everything else, and wait for a ground station pass to know which one it was. So that took like, you know, that took like 3 days just to figure out that software issue, and then yeah, two weeks after that then we started commissioning and turning on all the different payloads, and then we trained the first model, ran the first version of Gemini, we did the first fine-tuning of a model in orbit, did the first high-power inference on satellite imagery, and all this kind of stuff.

所以 StarCloud 1 现在，就在我们说话的时候，刚刚离开中国领空，我想即将进入日本。

So StarCloud 1 right now as we speak is just left Chinese airspace, I think about to enter Japan.

是的。

Yeah.

它其实飞得挺快的。

It's going quite fast actually.

是的。它以大约每小时 17,000 英里的速度飞行。绕地球一圈大约需要一个半小时。

Yeah. So it travels around 17,000 mph. It's about an hour and a half to do one circumnavigation.

所以，我的意思是，到 StarCloud 4 左右，这就不只是一颗了。它会是一个覆盖地球的巨大网络，实际上。

So, I mean, by StarCloud 4 or so, this won't be like one. It'll be a giant network sort of covering the Earth, actually.

是的。从 StarCloud 3 开始，我们将有 88,000 颗卫星，它们都会飞行。这颗卫星处于所谓的“中倾角轨道”，所以它不经过两极。嗯，StarCloud，这也是说明这颗卫星有多简陋的另一点。它甚至不在正确的轨道上飞行，但至少它让我们能够测试硬件。嗯，下一颗将飞越两极，这样我们就能 24 小时始终在阳光下。

Yeah. From StarCloud 3 onwards, we'll have 88,000 and they'll all fly. This one is in what they call mid-inclination orbit, so it doesn't go over the poles. Um, StarCloud and that's another point here on how janky this one is. It doesn't even fly in the right orbit, but at least it enables us to test the hardware. Um, the next one will fly over the poles, and that gives us 24-hour always in the sun.

要做到这一点，你需要给卫星安装推进器，把它推进那个轨道。

In order to do that, you need to put thrusters on the satellite to move it into that orbit.

最终，它们会在那个轨道上部署，但无论如何你都需要推进器来维持轨道，因为那里有来自高层大气的阻力。

In the end, they will be deployed in that orbit, but you need thrusters anyway to maintain the orbit because you have, you know, drag from the upper atmosphere there.

要实现这一点，你需要做出哪些工程和物理上的权衡？因为你用 StarCloud 做的事情基本上是获得无限能量，因为太阳基本上就是天然聚变反应堆，就是一个巨大的质量体，与巨大的质量体发生核反应，你基本上拥有无限的能量，丰富且空间巨大。但正因如此，我们在地球上受到限制，你还有一堆其他非常难解决的问题，比如互联。你怎么把所有数据来回发送回地球？你怎么处理冷却？人们认为太空是冷的，但实际上，不像地球，没有空气来循环散热。所以你需要一些疯狂的冷却解决方案。还有辐射导致处理器中比特翻转的问题。可能还有其他关于如何让太阳能电池板变得非常大并展开的问题。还有很多。我的意思是，这些是我能想到的。我的意思是，有太多东西很难建造。

What are the engineering and physics trade-offs you have to make this happen? Because what you basically are doing with StarCloud is you're getting infinite energy because the sun is basically the natural fusion reactor, is just a giant mass that generates a nuclear reaction with the giant mass, and you have infinite energy basically abundant and lots of space. But as a result of that, which we are constrained of that in Earth, you have a bunch of other really hard problems to solve, like things around interconnect. How do you send all the data back and forth back to Earth? How do you handle cooling? People think that space is cold, but actually there's no, unlike Earth, there's no air to circulate it back. So you need some crazy solutions with cooling. There's things around radiation to flip the bits in processors. And there's probably other things around how to get the solar panels to become really big and expand. And many more. I mean, these are the ones that I could think of. I mean, what are there's like so many things that are just so hard to build.

是的，你说得对。有很多工程挑战需要解决。最突出的两个最大问题，我们工程团队基本上 50/50 分成两条线，第一，正如你提到的，如何在真空中散热，第二，如何让芯片在更高辐射环境中工作。其他一些问题正在由其他人解决。你知道，互联。我们刚刚与 SpaceX 签署了合同，为我们接下来的 20 颗卫星配备 Starlink 激光终端，提供非常高带宽、低延迟的连接。其他人正在解决其他部分。我们解决的核心问题是这些。所以对于第一个，在热管理方面，我们正在建造一个非常大、低成本、低质量的展开式散热器。现在，太空中的散热器并不新鲜。这不是新的物理解决方案。

Yeah, you are correct. There are many engineering challenges to be solved. The two biggest ones that are outstanding, and most of our engineering team is split basically 50/50 down these two lines, is number one, as you mentioned, how do you get rid of this heat in a vacuum, and then number two, how do we make the chips work in a higher radiation environment. Some of the other problems are being solved by other people. You know, the interconnect. We've just signed a contract with SpaceX for our next 20 satellites to have a Starlink laser terminal that gives us very high bandwidth, low latency connectivity. Other people are solving some other parts of this. The core ones we're solving are that. And so for the first one, for the thermal management side of things, we are building a very large, low-cost, and low-mass deployable radiator. Now, radiators in space are not new. It's not a new physics solution.

这更像是一个制造和工程挑战，因为国际空间站已经有散热器，能散发大量热量，机制非常相似，就是液冷回路。挑战在于让它便宜且轻便。所以我们的散热器每瓦散热的重量至少比国际空间站的散热器轻 10 倍，每瓦散热的成本低 500 倍。所以基准很低，在成本上很容易超过国际空间站。但至于辐射，就是在地面粒子加速器里做大量测试。我们在布鲁克海文国家实验室的粒子加速器上做了几轮重离子测试，还在诺克斯维尔的回旋加速器上做了高速质子测试。我们把所有硬件都运到那里。我的联合创始人 Addy 穿着防护服进进出出。Addy 在这事上是个疯子。他说：‘哦，是的，和跨大西洋飞行一样，别担心辐射。’所以，基本上，你在 24 小时内暴露在相当于 5 年任务的辐射剂量下。然后所有这些遥测和数据会指导我们在屏蔽和软件上做选择，以减轻位翻转。我想我们是世界上唯一知道 H100、B200、H200 在高速质子和重离子轰击下会在哪里失效的人。

It's more of a manufacturing and engineering challenge because the International Space Station has had a radiator which dissipates lots of heat already, very similar mechanism, a liquid-cooled loop. The challenge with it is making it cheap and light. So our radiator is at least 10 times less mass per watt of dissipation than the ISS radiator, and 500 times less cost per watt of dissipation than the ISS radiator. So very low bench, very easy benchmark to beat on cost for the ISS. But yeah, and then on radiation, it's just a lot of ground testing in different particle accelerators. So we've done several rounds of testing at the Brookhaven National Lab particle accelerator for heavy ions, and also at the cyclotron for high-velocity protons down in Knoxville. So we ship all of our hardware down there. My co-founder Addy runs in and out wearing this protective thing. Addy is a lunatic when it comes to this stuff. He's like, 'Oh, yeah. It's the same as flying transatlantic. Don't worry about the radiation.' So, yeah, basically, you expose it over a 24-hour period to the same radiation dose that you would have in a 5-year mission. And then all of that telemetry and data then informs our choice on both shielding and software to mitigate bit flips. I think we're the only people in the world now that know where both an H100, a B200, H200 will fail if you blast it with high-velocity protons and heavy ions.

你需要改变任何底层电子设备来解决问题，还是只是在它周围加屏蔽？

Do you have to change any of the underlying electronics to solve the problem, or do you just build shielding around it?

两者都有。两者都有。所以我们确实在它周围加屏蔽。很多只是组件选择。例如，所有的 SSD、所有的电源系统、所有的电源转换器等等，我们测试 10 个组件，选最好的那个。我们尽量不用航天级组件，而是用现成的、汽车级的组件，因为便宜得多，而且大多数人都没在辐射室里测试过这些。我认为这是 SpaceX 真正降低很多卫星成本的一个秘密。他们不用航天级电子设备，那会极其昂贵，而是用有供应链的普通组件，跑完所有测试，确保它能工作。我认为这也是 Starlink 做的事情之一，以确保通信卫星在太空真正工作，因为它们也在 GEO，辐射更强。

Both. Both. So we do build shielding around it. There's a lot of it is just component selection. So for example, all of the SSDs, all of the power delivery system, all of the power converters and everything else, we test 10 components and whichever the best one is, we pick. We're trying not to use space-rated components. We're trying to use off-the-shelf, like automotive-style components, because it's way cheaper, and most people have never tested those in radiation chambers. I think that's one of the secrets of how SpaceX has actually reduced a lot of the costs of a lot of the satellites as well. They use not space-graded electronics, which would be exorbitantly expensive, but instead you take regular components that there's a supply chain and run through all the tests and make sure it works. And I think actually this is one of the things that Starlink does as well, to make sure that telecommunication satellites actually work in space, because they're also in GEO, which has more radiation.

你们也在 GEO 吗？

Are you in GEO as well?

不，我们在 LEO。是的。

No, we're in LEO. Yeah.

当你第一次告诉人们你要把数据中心放到太空时，人们的反应是什么？

When you first told people that you were going to put data centers in space, what were people's reactions?

很长一段时间里，他们的反应是，这是我听过的最蠢的主意。所以，是的，我们尝试融资，我们其实申请了 YC，我们进了，然后我们尝试融资，我们试图以 10 post 的 SAFE 融 200 万。花了 3 个月，被至少 100 家 VC 拒绝。然后即使在 YC 之后，我们在 demo day 后出去融资，我想在被第一张支票之前，我们至少被 20 家 VC 拒绝。这是一个在投资者中极不受欢迎的想法，如果你听了所有投资者告诉你的话，你就会放弃，永远不会做这个想法。

For a very long time, their reaction was, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So, yeah, we tried to raise, we actually applied to YC once, and we got in, then we tried to raise, and it took, we tried to raise 2 million at 10 post on a safe. It took 3 months, and we got rejected from at least 100 VCs. And then even after YC, when we went out to raise after demo day, I think we got rejected from at least 20 VCs before we got to the first check. This is one of these ideas that was extremely unpopular with investors, and if you had listened to what all the investors were telling you, you would have quit and not ever done this idea.

我很好奇，人们为什么告诉你他们不投资，他们哪里搞错了？

I'm curious, why did people tell you that they were not investing, and what did they get wrong?

人们很难想象一个低成本发射的世界，公平地说，我们在这方面还没有走出困境。你知道，星舰计划需要很多事情顺利才能让这有意义。所以这是一件事。我认为它听起来太科幻了。第二，是的，要让这成功，需要两个因素的汇聚。一个是发射成本下降，人们必须相信这一点。第二个是地面建造东西变得困难得多。也许两年前这还不像今天那么明显。现在人们会说：‘好吧，他们刚刚禁止在纽约建新数据中心。他们会在其他七个州也禁止。’现在我认为这两件事汇聚在一起，让它本质上更可投资了。

People had a hard time visualizing a world with low-cost launch, and to be fair, we're still not out of the woods on that front. You know, lots of things need to go right with the Starship program for that to make sense. So that's one thing. I think it just sounds too sci-fi. And two, yeah, to make this work, there's a convergence of two factors. One is the launch cost coming down, and people have to believe that. The second is it becoming way harder to build stuff terrestrially. Maybe two years ago that wasn't quite as obvious as it is today. Now people are like, 'Okay, well they just banned building new data centers in New York. They're going to ban it in like seven other states.' Now those two things I think converged to make it more investable essentially.

而且我觉得听完你解释所有工程和物理之后，这实际上是可行的。从第一性原理来看，它听起来不像科幻。它实际上是可建造的。

And I think the thing after hearing you explain all the engineering and physics, it actually is doable. It doesn't sound like sci-fi from first principles. It's like it's actually buildable.

我对它有信心的原因是因为我们有一个非常强大的工程团队。所以如果你有世界上最好的太空工程师说这是可能的，而且坦率地说，我的背景不是太空工程师，但我对我的两位联合创始人完全有信心，一位来自 SpaceX，另一位为 NASA 建造卫星，他们说这是可能的，那么你知道这对我来说就足够了。

The reason I had confidence in it is because we had such a strong engineering team. So if you have the world's best space engineers saying this is possible, and to be frank, my background isn't as a space engineer, but I have full confidence in my two co-founders, one from SpaceX, the other was building satellites for NASA, saying it's possible, then you know that's good enough for me.

一旦你有了这个想法，然后我说一旦你进入 YC，你如何把问题分解成一个计划？显然在软件里，你知道你会想到 MVP，快速发布，获得反馈，但太空数据中心很难做到这一点。

Once you had the idea, and then I say once you're in YC, how did you sort of break the problem down into like a plan for what to do? Obviously in software it's you know you think of your MVP and you launch quickly and you get feedback, but hard to do that with data centers in space.

我对所有太空公司有一个非常具体的建议。每个太空公司应该做的第一件事是预订他们能订到的第一次可用发射

I have a very tangible piece of advice for all space companies. The first thing every space company should do is book the first available launch they can

在他们建造要发射的东西之前

before they built the thing that they're going to launch

在他们建造东西之前，甚至可能不知道他们要发射什么。预订发射对太空公司来说是一个很好的强制功能。

before they built the thing, before they probably even know what they're going to launch. Booking a launch is such a good forcing function for a space company.

所以我们在 2024 年 1 月 1 日创立了公司。1 月 2 日，我们预订了第一次可用的 SpaceX 拼车发射，而且很便宜。大概 30 万美元，你知道，

So we founded the company January 1st, 2024. January 2nd, we booked the first available SpaceX rideshare launch, and it was cheap. It's like 300 grand, you know,

那次发射是多久之后？

which was how far out was the launch?

那是 18 个月后，然后被推迟到 21 个月后，我们想，好吧，那枚火箭上会有东西。我现在还不 100% 确定会是什么，但上面会有东西。

It was 18 months out, and then it got pushed to 21 months out, and we were like, okay, something is going to be on that rocket. I'm not 100% sure what it's going to be at this point, but something is going to be on there.

它一定会发生。

It's going to happen.

这很有趣。

That's interesting.

听起来对所有软件公司也是一样的建议。只要不断发布、发布。同样的事情。

Sounds like the same advice for all the software companies. Just got to keep launching and launching. Same thing.

是的。是的。我们最初计划发射的东西其实很不起眼。我们打算放一个 Jetson 芯片，以前在很多卫星上飞过，我们打算用它做边缘处理之类的事情。我们其实很早就换了联合创始人，当我们从 SpaceX 招来 Addy 时，Addy 说：‘哦，那太逊了。让我们放一个 H100 上去。’我们说：‘Addy，你不能把 H100 放在卫星上。’他说：‘当然可以。’有多少人说运行一个功率密度那么高的芯片在物理上是不可能的。

Yeah. Yeah. And what we initially planned to launch was very unimpressive actually. It was like we were going to put a Jetson chip, which has been flown on many satellites before, and we were going to use it for edge processing and things. We actually had a co-founder change quite early on, and when we got Addy from SpaceX, Addy was like, 'Oh, that's lame. Let's put an H100 on there.' We're like, 'Addy, you can't put H100 on a satellite.' He's like, 'Sure you can.' The amount of people who said it was physically impossible to run a chip that's that power dense.

是什么导致它不可能实现？

What would have caused it to be impossible?

有两件事。一是热管理方面。它们功率密度很高，产生大量热量。第二是它们从未在太空辐射环境中测试过。这两点都是问题。对于第一个问题，我们用了有点古怪的解决方案。我们把整个东西浸没在这种相变材料中。所以 StarCloud One 上的一切都浸没在这种相变材料里。这就像对所有组件、所有供电、内存等进行浸没式冷却。以前从来没有人考虑过在太空中做类似的事情。这不是一个特别可扩展的解决方案。它的占空比相当低。你得等它融化，然后它每隔一段时间就会凝固。但这让我们能够证明你可以在太空中运行 H100。下一个是这种直接芯片液冷架构，我们可以连续运行。但是，是的，我完全归功于我的联合创始人 Ali，他想出了一些相当古怪疯狂的点子。

There are two things. One is the thermal side of things. They're very power dense, they produce a lot of heat. And the second is they had never been tested in the radiation environment of space. And both of those. So for the first one, it's kind of a wacky solution. We submerged the entire thing in this phase change material. So everything on StarCloud One is submerged in this phase change material. It's like immersion cooling for all of the components, all of the power delivery, memory, everything is submerged. Nobody's ever considered doing anything like that in space before. It's not a particularly scalable solution. It's not like you have quite a low duty cycle. You have to wait for it to melt and then it solidifies every so often. But it enables us to prove that you can run the H100 in space. The next one is this direct chip liquid cooling architecture that we can run continuously. But yeah, I give full credit to my co-founder Ali for coming up with some pretty wacky and crazy ideas.

要达到商业规模的数据中心，能真正赚钱、实现盈利，这需要很多步骤。你是如何考虑规划实现这一目标的路径的？

To get to a data center that's like commercial scale where you can actually make money on it, it's actually profitable, it's going to require many steps. How did you think about sequencing out the journey to get there?

正如我所说，第一步是预订我们所能拥有的第一次发射、最低可行产品。第二步是生产出我们可以卖给客户的产品。那就是 StarCloud 2。那是一个 10 千瓦的航天器，我们可以向政府和军用卫星出售算力。第三步是我们要能卖给超大规模数据中心的产品。那就是 StarCloud 3。它是一个 200 千瓦、3 吨重的航天器，大约 6 米长。有了它，每艘星舰可以搭载 50 个。所以每艘星舰大约能提供 10 兆瓦的新算力。我们刚刚向 FCC 提交了 88,000 个这样的星座申请。这意味着大约 20 吉瓦的新算力。

So as I say, first step was booking whatever the first launch, lowest MVP we can have available. Second step is producing something which is a product we can sell to customers. So that's StarCloud 2. That's a 10 kilowatt spacecraft that we can sell compute to government and military satellites. And then the third step is the product that we're going to be able to sell to hyperscale data centers. So that's the StarCloud 3. It's a 200 kilowatt, 3 ton spacecraft. It's about 6 meters long. With that we can fit 50 of them per Starship. So about 10 megawatts of new compute capacity per Starship. And we've just filed with the FCC for a constellation of 88,000 of those. So that means on the order of 20 gigawatts of new compute capacity.

哇。

Wow.

而且我们可以在黎明太阳同步轨道上容纳高达 10 太瓦的算力。这相当于美国整个电网的 20 倍。

And we can fit up to 10 terawatts in the dawn sun-synchronous orbit. So that's like 20 times the entire US power grid.

作为背景，地球上最大的数据中心部署规模是多少？因为你说的可是 20 吉瓦。天哪。今天地球上最大的一个有多大？

For context, what's the largest data center deployment on Earth? Because you're talking about 20 gigawatts. Oh my god. What's the largest one here on Earth today?

最大的大约是一吉瓦。是的。

They're about a gigawatt is the largest. Yeah.

这一切变成现实的时间表是怎样的？

What's the timetable for all of this to become real?

是的。这很大程度上取决于发射成本。你知道，对星舰的估计，如果你相信埃隆的话，会是今年年底。但假设可能是明年年底，2028 年初，星舰开始部署，提高发射频率。他们实际上正在逐步淘汰猎鹰 9 号。所以他们要把商业客户转移到星舰上。还有很多其他运载火箭即将上线。斯托克航天有 Nova 火箭。火箭实验室有中子号。蓝色起源有新格伦号。所以我认为 2028 年底是我们开始为地面业务提速、与地面数据中心竞争的时候。

Yeah. It's very dependent on the launch cost. You know, estimates for Starship, if you believe Elon, it will be end of this year. But let's say it could be end of next year, early 2028 for Starship deploying, ramping up the launch cadence. They're actually phasing out Falcon 9. So they're going to be moving over commercial customers to Starship. There's also a whole bunch of other launch vehicles coming online. Stoke Space has the Nova rocket. Rocket Lab has Neutron. Blue Origin has New Glenn. So end of 2028, I'd say, is when we're starting to ramp up for the terrestrial business, competing with terrestrial data centers.

所以你的客户实际上是任何需要算力的人，然后最初是？

So your customers are actually anyone who wants compute and then initially?

最初是政府和军方。但随着星舰的提速，在接下来的两三年里，我们刚刚赢得了与多个国防部和政府实体的四份合同。

Initially it's government and military. But then as Starship ramps up, so for the next two or three years, we've just won four contracts with various DOD and government entities.

然后最初也是那些在太空中出于其他目的需要算力的人，对吗？

And then initially also it's people who want that compute actually for other purposes in space, then is that right?

是的，完全正确。所以现在许多卫星在下行数据量方面受到很大限制。因此，利用光学终端，我们的第二颗卫星上将有三个光学终端。它们可以向我们传输大量的原始卫星图像和 SAR 数据、合成孔径雷达数据。然后我们在轨道上处理这些数据，然后我们可以非常快速地下行传输从中得到的洞察。这些洞察可能是船只的坐标之类的。

Yeah, exactly. So right now many satellites are very constrained with the amount of data they can downlink. And so, using optical terminals, we'll have three optical terminals on our second satellite. They can ship enormous amounts of raw satellite imagery and SAR data, synthetic aperture radar data to us. We then process that on orbit and then we can just downlink very quickly the insight from that. And the insight might be the coordinates of a vessel or something like that.

关于英伟达，你们在芯片设计方面是如何与他们合作的？随着规模扩大，你们是否需要对设计进行更改，比如让它更抗辐射？那是什么样的？

In terms of Nvidia, how are you partnering with them around chip design? Are there changes that you have to make to the design as you reach scale, like making it more radiation resistant? What does that look like?

是的。所以我们正在与英伟达非常紧密地合作。我们最近宣布了与他们合作的 Rubin Space、Rubin One 芯片。那是为太空环境设计的。我们非常大幅度地修改了 H100 以使其在太空中工作。所以在质量方面，我们剥离了很多东西，比如交流到直流转换器、冷板等等。我们剥离了这些，然后加固了电路板并使其具有抗辐射能力。因此，他们对这非常感兴趣。我们基本上是唯一拥有这些高功率 GPU 在太空中运行数据的人。所以是的，我们正在与他们非常紧密地合作设计这款新的太空芯片，因为你可以通过非常简单的事情让这些芯片在太空中运行得更有效。这就是我们正在做的。

Yeah. So we're working very closely with Nvidia. We recently announced this Rubin Space, Rubin One chip that we're working with them on. So that's designed for the space environment. We very heavily modified the H100 to make it work in space. So on the mass side of things, we stripped out a lot of things like the AC to DC converters, the cold plates and everything else. We stripped out and then we stiffened the board and made it radiation tolerant. So because of that, they're very interested. We're the only people basically that have any data on how one of these high power GPUs operates in space. So yeah, we're working with them very closely on designing this new space chip, because you can actually do very simple things to make these chips way more effective to run in space. And so that's what we're doing.

我认为让 GPU 现在原生运行在直流电上，你避免了整个交流到直流的能量转换，因为正是这种转换让太阳能电池板效率不高。你会损失很多电力，这是……

I think the thing of getting GPUs to now natively run on DC, you avoid the whole conversion of energy AC to DC, because that's what makes solar panels not as efficient, is the whole conversion. You lose a lot of power which is...

是的。我们的太阳能电池板直接产生直流电。所以没有必要做交流到直流的转换。我们只需要直流到直流的转换器。但这比交流到直流转换器好得多。

Yeah. Our solar panels generate DC immediately. So there's no point doing AC to DC. We just need DC to DC converters. But that's much better than AC to DC converters.

所以你可以解锁一堆公司，也仅仅使用太阳能来建造 GPU 数据中心，无论是在太空、水下还是地球上。

So you could unlock a bunch of companies also just building GPU data centers using solar power period. Whether in space, under the water, or on Earth.

是的。我的意思是，是的，实际上人们肯定可以把这项技术用于其他事情。是的。

Yeah. I mean, yeah, actually people can definitely use this tech for other things. Yeah.

你再详细说说 StarCloud 2。里面是不是真的也有一个比特币矿机？

You talk about StarCloud 2 a little bit more. Like is there actually a Bitcoin miner in there as well?

是的，明年我们将搭载一个比特币挖矿 ASIC，加密社区对此非常兴奋。说实话，对此的热情比我预期的要多得多。

Yes, we will be flying a Bitcoin mining ASIC next year, which the crypto community is very excited about. There's much more enthusiasm than I was expecting to be honest about that.

喜欢好故事。想让我推出 Starcoin 的人数，你无法想象。

Loves a good narrative. The number of people that want me to launch Starcoin. You have no idea.

实际上，我认为外面有一个 StarCloud 迷因币。

There is actually a StarCloud memecoin, I think, out there.

是的。别买。那不是官方的。

Yeah. Don't buy it. It's not official.

不要买 StarCloud 迷因币。

Do not buy the StarCloud memecoin.

是的。是的。

Yeah. Yeah.

所以是的，我们将发射，我们会在上面放一个。

So yeah, we'll be launching, we'll have one of those on there.

我们会有更多的 H100，Blackwell 也会发货。我们还在与 AWS 合作推出 Outpost 硬件。那是他们的本地服务器刀片，提供给客户运行本地版的 VC2，这对我们的军事客户尤其有用。

We'll have a whole bunch more H100s, Blackwell ship. We're also partnering with AWS on launching the Outpost hardware. That's their on-premises server blade that they give to customers to run a local instance of VC2, and that will be useful particularly for our military customers.

我们之前聊过，在 YC 这几年我们观察到，硬科技公司普遍很难融资，投资者兴趣不大。但过去 6 个月显然发生了变化。从你的角度看，我很好奇在 YC 期间融种子轮，以及后来从 Benchmark 融到那笔巨额融资是怎样的过程。也许给我们讲讲内幕，以及如今作为硬科技创始人融资是什么感受。

Something we were talking about earlier is at YC we've just observed over the last few years it's been quite hard for hard tech companies to raise funding in general. There's not been much investor appetite for it. It certainly seems to have changed over the last 6 months. From your perspective, I'm curious how was it raising the seed round in Jur during YC and then this huge round you raised from Benchmark. Maybe tell us the inside story of how that all came together and what it feels like being a hard tech founder raising money today.

我们在 2023 年底第一次融资时，试图以 1000 万投后估值融 200 万美元，花了三个月才凑齐。大约 100 家 VC 拒绝了。当时太空领域的深科技和硬科技绝对不是热门投资方向。YC 之后，我们花了很长时间才融到资。我想在 demo day 融资拿到第一张支票之前，我们至少被 20 家 VC 拒绝过。

So when we first raised at the end of 2023, we tried to raise $2 million at 10 post, and that took three months to get together. About 100 VCs said no. Deep tech and hard tech in space were definitely not a cool thing to invest in back then. Then after YC, it took us quite a while to raise. I think we got rejected from at least 20 VCs before we got our first check on the demo day raise.

从那以后情况确实发生了转变。深科技融资变得容易多了。我认为原因有很多。一是人们认为软件不再有护城河，我觉得这可能是准确的。

And things have definitely swung around since then. It's become a lot easier to raise for deep tech. I think there are a number of reasons for that. One is people think that software doesn't have a moat anymore, which I think is probably accurate.

那种蜂巢效应。有趣的是，思维蜂巢转变的速度在我看来非常快。就像 SaaS 股票，Claude Code 一出来，SaaS 股票、上市公司股票全都跌了，然后突然之间——我觉得这是我见过的公共市场直接影响 demo day 最快的一次，突然每个人都觉得‘哦，我们现在需要投资硬科技了’。

That sort of hive. It's funny how the hive of mind just switched, seemed to me like very quickly. It was just like the SaaS stocks, like Claude Code came out, SaaS stocks, public company stocks all went down, and then suddenly it was like—I think that's the fastest I've seen things in the public markets directly affect demo day, where suddenly everyone's like, 'Oh, we need to invest in hard tech now.'

是的，这很迷人。我觉得现在人们对投资硬科技开放多了。我想我们是 Benchmark 做的第一笔太空投资。

Yeah, that's fascinating. I think people are just much more open to investing in hard tech now. I think we were the first space investment Benchmark has done.

是的，我的意思是，你能分享多少就分享多少——那轮融资是怎么凑起来的，你觉得 Benchmark 看中了你们什么？

Yeah, I mean, whatever you can share—how did that round kind of come together, and what do you think Benchmark saw in you guys?

说实话，那轮融资从外面看没那么容易。首先，很多 VC 持有大量 SpaceX 头寸，而 SpaceX 在融资中途公开说他们正在做我们正在做的事，当时这还没公开。所以任何有利益冲突政策的 VC 都会说‘好吧，我们有冲突，退出’。但到了融资后期，进展快多了。我想，坦白说，我不认为——Chathan 是我们的合伙人。Chathan 很棒。

So to be frank, that round wasn't as easy as it looks from the outside. There are a lot of VCs that have big SpaceX positions for one thing, and SpaceX, midway through the round, came out saying they're doing exactly what we're doing, and it wasn't public then. So anybody with a conflict policy was like, 'Okay, we're conflicted out.' But towards the end of the round, it came together much faster. I think, to be frank, I don't think—Chathan is our partner. Chathan's awesome.

了不起的投资者。

Amazing investor.

是的，他很棒。我觉得基本上他看到了一个非常非常强的技术团队在做一件如果成功就会不可思议的事情。他来拜访我们时，花了很多时间做尽职调查——调查我们所有人的背景——我们拥有最好的，我们真的拥有世界上最好的工程团队，在雷德蒙德做这件事。一半来自 SpaceX，另一半来自一些超大规模云服务商。所以他花了很多时间和团队在一起。但我认为，即使他看到一份报告说太空计算不可能，也不会让他动摇。我觉得他会想‘好吧，这个团队足够优秀，他们能搞定’。

Yeah, he's great. I think basically he saw a really, really strong technical team doing something that, if it worked, could be incredible. And when he came to visit us, he spent a lot of time doing DD on other things—on the backgrounds of all of our—we've got the best, we literally have the best freaking engineering team in the world in Redmond building this stuff. Half of them from SpaceX, the other half from some of the hyperscalers. So he spent a lot of time with the team. But I don't think if he'd come across a report that said that calling in space was impossible, that that would have thrown him off. I think he was like, 'Okay, this is a good enough team that they can figure it out.'

你是怎么组建这么棒的团队的？

How did you build such an awesome team?

所以，我的联合创始人 Addy 和 Ezra。对于 Ezra，是我去了德克萨斯州的 Starbase 之后联系他的，我问‘如果发射成本比现在便宜 10 倍，你有什么能赚钱的想法吗？’我们最初是从天基太阳能这个想法开始的。对于 Addy，是通过朋友的朋友介绍的，他其实已经在思考这个了。他之前已经注册了 stellaccloud.com 这个域名。至于团队，我们在招聘上极其缓慢和挑剔。YC 之后我们融了大约 1100 万美元，估值 4000 万，这在 YC 算是不错的轮次，但即便如此，我们花了 6 个月才招到第一个人。我们第一个招到的是最厉害的空间工程师。我们现在已经融了很多钱。即使是我们 3 月宣布的那轮，之后我们又融了更大的一轮。我们仍然只有 20 名工程师，还有一个来自太空部队的商业人员，他之前在做 Golden Dome。我们对招聘极其挑剔。说实话，这已经到了非常令人沮丧的程度，但这就是整个游戏。整个游戏就是拥有一支厉害的工程团队。

So, my co-founders Addy and Ezra. With Ezra, I reached out to him after I'd been down to Starbase, Texas, and I was like, 'Have you got any ideas that would make money if launch cost was 10x cheaper than it is today?' And we started with this space-based solar idea. With Addy, who was introduced through a friend through a friend, he actually had already been thinking about this. He had already registered the domain name stellaccloud.com before. And then with the team, we were just ruthlessly slow at hiring and picky about hiring. After YC we'd raised like $11 million at 40, which is a decent round in YC, and even then it took us 6 months to make our first hire. And we got the most kick-ass space engineer as our first hire. We've raised like a lot of money now. Even this round that we announced in March, we've raised a much larger round since then. We're still only 20 engineers, and we have one commercial guy who came from the Space Force who was working on Golden Dome. We are so picky about who we hire. It is to a point of being very frustrating, to be honest, but it's the whole game. The whole game is having a kick-ass engineering team.

有这个想法，人们有点嗤之以鼻，不太理解，然后突然有了更多的商业验证，比如 Google、SpaceX 这些行业巨头拥抱了这个想法，意识到未来数据中心可能有很大比例会建在太空。看到这种转变并成为先行者，是什么感觉？

What was it like to have this idea, have people sort of poo-poo it, didn't really get it, and then suddenly, to have much more commercial validation, like Google, SpaceX, the stalwarts of the industry, sort of embraced the idea and realized actually some crazy percentage of future data centers likely are going to be in space. What was that like to see the sea change and be early?

这太超现实了。如果你翻看我的 Twitter 动态，过去三年我一直在屋顶上大喊这件事。

It was surreal. If you go back through my Twitter feed, I've been shouting from the rooftops for the last three years about this.

但确实。

But right.

我每天都会发一些关于为什么太空数据中心会合理的内容，然后慢慢地，慢慢地，人们开始暗示一些事情。Elon 曾说过‘太阳系中 99.999% 的能量来自太阳’。所以我会转发那个，然后说‘我们需要在太空建数据中心’。我会为每件事找到切入点。

Every day I would post something about why data centers in space are going to make sense, and then slowly, slowly, slowly people would start to drop hints about things. Elon at one point was like, '99.999% of the energy in the solar system is from the sun.' So I'd repost that and I'd be like, 'We need to build data centers in space.' I would find a hook for everything.

我认为这是我们在所有最优秀的硬科技创始人身上看到的一点。你基本上生活在未来，几乎像一个先知，把未来带回现在，带给我们这些还没完全理解的凡夫俗子。

I think this is one of the things we see with all the best hard tech founders. You're essentially living in the future and are almost like a prophet that brings the future back to now, to us underlings in the earth that don't quite get it yet.

我要告诉我妈妈，她非常虔诚，她会说我是先知。

I'm going to tell my mom, who's very religious, that she said I'm a prophet.

但我觉得这很酷。另一件让我着迷的事情是，你的背景，如果你看你的 LinkedIn，不太能看出你会做太空。你之前有软件和物理背景，然后转向商业，但那里没有任何东西表明太空。

But I think that's cool. And the other thing that's fascinating to me is that your background, if you go on your LinkedIn, is not very legible that you would be in space. But you had a background previously doing software and physics and then went to business, but nothing there that said space.

是的。所以对于不了解我背景的人，我职业生涯的头五年是软件工程师，之前学的是数学和物理。

Yeah. So for people who don't know my background, I spent the first five years of my career as an engineer on the software side, studying math and physics before that.

我读了本科和硕士，然后去了麦肯锡，更多是商业产品方向，但后来我确实参与了一些国家航天局的项目，涉及不同的卫星任务，正是在那里我开始注意到发射成本在迅速下降。我之前其实还做过另一家创业公司。当我离开那家公司时，我决定，好吧，如果我要再做一家创业公司，那必须是我非常热衷的事情。而我一生都对太空充满热情。但我的背景不是太空工程，所以我意识到，我需要世界上最顶尖的太空工程师。实际上，这要归功于 YC。我当时有点盲目遵循 YC 的建议。所以我想，好吧，在提出想法之前，我们首先要做的是把世界上最优秀的太空工程师招入团队。

I did undergrad and masters, and then I went to McKinsey more on the commercial product side, but I actually ended up doing a couple of projects with national space agencies on different satellite missions, and that's where I really started to notice the launch cost coming down very rapidly. I actually had another startup before this. And yeah, when I left that one, I decided, okay, if I'm going to do another startup, it has to be something I'm very passionate about. And for my whole life, I've been very passionate about space. But I don't have a space engineering background, so I realized, okay, I'm going to need the world's most kickass space engineers. And actually, this is where I give credit to YC. I was kind of blindly following the YC advice. So I was like, okay, the first thing we need to do before coming up with an idea is get the most incredible space engineers in the world on the team.

这是在你还不知道想在太空做什么之前。那时你只知道发射成本会大幅下降，太空会有很多酷事可做，而你想找一些太空领域的人一起做。

This was before you even knew what you wanted to do in space. All you knew at that point was that launch costs were going to come down dramatically and there were going to be cool stuff to do in space, and you wanted to find some space people to do it with.

是的，就是这样，真的就是这样。

Yes. Literally, that is literally it.

但这不是那种“哦，你能帮我实现这个疯狂的想法吗？”的感觉，反而是反过来的，比如“我来搞定商业部分”。

But it wasn't a vibe of like, oh, can you please build this crazy idea that I have? It's like the reverse, even like I'm going to figure out the commercial part.

是的，完全正确。我对 Addy 和 Ezra 的提议基本上是，如果发射成本比现在低 10 倍，你们有什么想法会变得可行？除了建造卫星这部分，其他一切我都能搞定。

Yeah, exactly. My pitch to Addy and Ezra was essentially if you have any ideas that would make sense if the launch cost was 10x less than it is today. I can figure out everything else around that besides the building the satellite piece.

你是怎么找到他们的？你是怎么招募到他们的？

How did you find them? How did you recruit them?

我和 Ezra 在英国同一个地方长大。说实话，我联系了很多太空工程师，大概有 10 个人接了电话，其中两个人答应了。

So Ezra and I had grown up in the same place in the UK. I didn't actually—to be frank—I messaged like a lot of space engineers. Maybe 10 of them took a call, and two of them said yes.

你只需要这些。你不需要一百个人来做这件事，只需要一两个就够了。

That's all you need. You don't need like a hundred people to do it. You only need one or two.

所以，Philip，在训练营期间，我对 StarCloud 的看法是，只有当你能让每单位算力的成本低于地面算力时，它才能成功。我相信你会做到，但自那以后，我意识到，对于 StarCloud 的成功来说，这似乎不再是必要条件了。我很好奇你是否也这么想，因为自从训练营以来，我们了解到 AI 数据中心在政治上变得极其不受欢迎，而且在我看来，很快在民主国家，几乎不可能再建造 AI 数据中心了。我很好奇你怎么看，这对你的公司计划有什么影响。

So, Philip, during the batch, the way I thought about StarCloud was that it could only work if you were able to make it cheaper per unit of compute than ground-based compute. And I think you will, but it's occurred to me since then that it's not actually clear to me anymore that that is necessary for StarCloud to succeed. I'm curious if you think about it the same way, because since the batch, we've learned that AI data centers are becoming politically incredibly unpopular, and it seems not unlikely to me that it will soon become like basically de facto impossible to build AI data centers anywhere, at least in a democratically aligned country. I'm curious how you think about that, how it affects your plans for the company.

是的，百分之百。而且说实话，这比我预期的还要快。你知道，我们刚刚看到纽约阻止数据中心建设，原因其实没有科学依据，更像是凭感觉。从监管角度来看，在太空建造这些东西肯定会容易得多。

Yeah, 100%. And this has moved faster than I was expecting as well, to be honest. You know, we've just seen New York now blocking data center construction, for reasons which are not grounded in science really. It seems more like vibes than anything else. Building these things in space will definitely be much easier from a regulatory perspective.

那我们来破除一些迷思。关于水，尤其是数据中心，有很多误解，还有电力。关于水，你首先想到的是什么？

So let's do some myth busting. There are a lot of misconceptions about certainly water and data centers, but also power. What are some of the things that come to your mind with water specifically?

水实际上只是电力的函数。如果你在冷却上投入更多电力，数据中心可以做到每天不消耗水。这正是所有数据中心公司现在提出的方案。任何数据中心公司都不太可能提出每天消耗大量水的数据中心。而且有证据表明，闭环系统可以消耗极少的水。

Water is really actually just a function of power. You can cool data centers with no daily consumptive use of water if you just throw more power at the problem essentially. And that is what all of the data center companies are now proposing. It's very unlikely that any data center company proposes any data center that is going to be consuming daily amounts of water. And there is actually evidence that you can have closed loop systems that consume very little water.

我觉得这个类比是，如果你经营一家汉堡店——一个相当大的数据中心，比如几百兆瓦，消耗的水量大约相当于一家麦当劳。

I think the analogy is like if you ran a burger shop—like a fairly large data center with like hundreds of megawatts would consume about the same amount of water as like a McDonald's.

是的。

Yeah.

所以这真的不是问题，但令人难以置信的是他们反复强调这一点。

So it's like it's really, you know, a non-issue, but it's unbelievable that they're repeating this so much.

是的，是的。不过它们确实消耗大量电力。所以目前大多数新的数据中心电力项目实际上都是用天然气发电机建造的。因此肯定有一些人对此表示反对。

Yeah. Yeah. They do use a lot of power though. So most new power projects for data centers right now are being built with natural gas generators actually. And so there's certainly some people that are pushing back on those.

我的意思是，其中一个论点是，随着数据中心的建设，它们会在电网上竞争，这有点不真实。

I mean, one of the arguments is that as data centers get built, they sort of compete on the grid, which is kind of not true.

如果你为它建一个新的电力项目，那也不成立，对吧？而人们通常就是这么做的。你根本无法从电网获得足够的电力。

Also not true if you build a new power project for it, right? Which is generally what people are doing. You just can't get enough power from the grid.

是的。

Yeah.

实际上也有证据表明，增加数据中心会提高电网容量，然后价格会随着时间下降。话虽如此，这有点像一场完美风暴——我们需要智能，我们需要数据中心。对美国和对西方来说，获得智能基本上已成为一个国家安全问题。这是未来一百年最重要的技术树。因此，如果科技政策让我们回到石器时代，甚至可能让我们输掉战争，那就会让 StarCloud 在将算力、AI 和电力上线方面处于不同的位置。

There's also some evidence actually that adding data centers increases the capacity of the grid and then prices actually come down over time. That being said, it's sort of a perfect storm—we need intelligence, we need data centers. It's become basically a national security issue for America and for the West to have access to intelligence. It's sort of the most important tech tree of the next hundred years. And so for tech policy to sort of put us back into the stone age and possibly lose the war for us, that puts StarCloud in a different position in terms of bringing compute and AI and power online.

是的，当然。这绝对让我们直接进入了国家安全范畴。

Yeah, for sure. It definitely puts us squarely in the national security bucket at that point.

那么，非常感谢你为西方而战。

I mean, thank you so much for fighting for the West then.

我们正在尽最大努力。

We're doing our best.

是的。作为 YC 历史上增长最快的独角兽之一，而且是以硬件公司的身份做到这一点，你对那些关注太空、想从事硬科技的人有什么最后的建议？你学到了什么，基于现在的你，你会对刚开始的自己说什么？

Yeah. So as one of the fastest growing unicorns in YC history, and to do it as a hardware company, do you have any closing thoughts for people who are looking at space, looking at hard tech as a thing that they want to work on? Like what have you learned and what would you tell the just starting out version of yourself based on where you're at now?

是的，我觉得现在太空领域有巨大的机遇。我们真的处于这个巨大太空产业的早期阶段。未来五年将上线的发射能力和容量真的令人难以置信。所以，我绝对鼓励人们进入这个领域。至于建议，YC 的建议依然成立：创始团队中的技术人才是你需要首先解决的问题。然后其他一切都会随之而来。

Yeah, I mean I think there's just huge opportunities now coming in with space. We're really at the very early innings with what's going to be this enormous industry in space. The amount of capacity and launch that's going to come online in the next five years is really mind-boggling. So yeah, I would definitely encourage people to step into that. In terms of advice, the YC advice stands true: technical talent on the founding team is the thing you need to solve for first. And then everything else follows from there.

Philip，非常感谢你来到 Light Cone。

Philip, thanks so much for coming on the Light Cone.

是的，非常感谢你们的邀请。谢谢你们在这里。

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Thanks for being here.