I keep my head pointed down for the most part so as to step on a cleverly laid rake just waiting to strike. But I do occasionally tilt my head up to admire the wonder of the sky in all its clear openness, which is usually quickly followed by me stepping on a cleverly laid rake.

I bring up this daily trauma to tangentially bring up a recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) notice that it has approved a SpaceX filing requesting the ability to launch some more satellites into space. I know: “Yawn. SpaceX wants to launch more satellites into space? Wake me up when it’s any day ending in ‘y.’”

The FCC notice explains that SpaceX wants permission to deploy of up to one million (million?!?) satellites, each of which to operate as part of an “orbital data center system.” Each one of these satellite – of which there could be up to one million (million!?!) of – will operate at an altitude of between 500 kilometers and 2,000 kilometers and be “within orbital shells spanning up to 50 kilometers each.”

If I’m reading this correctly, that’s up to one million “orbiting shells,” each spanning 50 kilometers.

I am no math whiz, but that seems like a lot of surface area (especially in kilometers). But that also makes sense as the filing notes that this request for these one million satellites – again, each within “orbiting shells spanning up to 50 kilometers” – represent the “first step toward becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization – one that can harness the Sun’s full power.”

First. Step.

Cue Montgomery (Mr.) Burns: “Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing: block it out.”

(And for the 99.9% of us that had no idea what this “Kardashev II-level civilization” thing is all about, it was devised by a 20th Century Russian astrophysicist to describe a civilization that can directly consume a star’s energy. Have at it.)

Now, in case you have been living – literally – under a rock, satellites are big right now. And I don’t mean just in their hype, but also in their growing physical presence streaming across our skies.

Depending on the source, there are approximately 15,000 man-made objects orbiting the Earth. That seems like a big number. But you know what is a bigger number? One million. That’s a much bigger number.

Maybe it’s because I still vividly remember as a kid watching SkyLab streak across the sky as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on its way to mostly burning up (sorry Australia!). Or maybe it was the site a few weeks ago of what I presume was one of those thousands of current man-made satellites that was supposed to be orbiting the Earth but instead brilliantly lit up the night sky as it streaked across one of my few upward peeks.

Either way, there are going to be a lot more of these events happening.

And lest you think I am only picking on SpaceX, other satellite entities have big plans.

AST SpaceMobile, for instance, is touting plans to launch up to 60 satellites by the end of this year, with its most recent satellites spanning 2,400 square feet.

And there are others.

But why?

My snide answer would be that as long as there are people in this world with more money than compassion, there will be crazy ideas, and what’s more crazy than shooting off a million satellites into space!?!

Sure, this SpaceX filing could be one of those aim-high requests that starts by asking for the stars when it really only wants the moon. But it also starts to get those tasked with approving – and potentially funding – such endeavors more comfortable with such bombastic requests. And there will definitely be more of these requests, see: “people in this world with more money than compassion.”

The optimist in me wants to believe that these mega-constellation deployments are being proffered up for the actual good of everything living on this planet. But does the planet really need one million floating data centers?

I know that satellites are great tools for providing connectivity to all parts of the globe. This includes life-changing connectivity that could improve the lives of billions of people.

But I also know that this can be done with a lot fewer than one million (or more!) satellites orbiting the Earth.

And beyond just the physicality of it all, is there really a business case for blocking out the sun?

I can see the whole “Kardashev II-level civilization” of it all, as power remains a significant hurdle toward supporting more ground-based data centers. (“Ground-based? Go shake your fist at the sky old man!”)

But, you know what’s cool about ground-based data centers? You don’t need an astronaut to plug a router back in, or install the latest Nvidia chip, or use whatever power you used to launch that astronaut into space to install that latest Nvidia chip into your satellite data center to just power that ground-based data center.

I guess there are more advanced ways to manage satellites.

Could these orbiting SpaceX data centers also pull double duty to bolster its Starlink satellite-based broadband service? I would hope so, but does that really improve the operational business case?

Maybe, and SpaceX does seem to at least be flirting with the idea of bolstering its Starlink service to compete directly with traditional telecom operators. You know, the ones that rely on old-school, ground-based antennas.

I know from my own family get togethers the folly in bringing opinions to any conversation, but it was interesting to hear AT&T CEO John Stankey recently drop some physics on the topic of satellite communication connectivity.

Stankey specifically pointed to limitations with “upstream bandwidth,” which “becomes more important in the AI dynamic.”

“It’s inherently going to be a more fragile upstream uplink than what you're going to get in a terrestrial network that gets on fiber really quickly,” Stankey said of a satellite upstream connection. “The faster you can get something on fiber, the more robust that upstream uplink is going to be, and the more low-band spectrum you have to do that, the more robust that upstream link is going to be. Satellite doesn't have those things.”

Stankey built on that spectrum notion by stating AT&T and its direct rivals T-Mobile US and Verizon each have access to approximately 300 megahertz of spectrum that can be transmitted from each cell site, which is more than triple the amount of spectrum the newly spectrum filled SpaceX can provide from its satellite constellation.

“If you think about it, you get 80 megahertz you get to put on a spot beam that has a radius that is dramatically larger than a cell site – you know, two-and-a-half miles, two miles for a cell site, you're talking about a spot beam right now that's probably close to 20 miles, and you're taking 80 megahertz and you're putting over that period, you have a weaker uplink. That's a hard putt to be a like-to-like replacement,” Stankey said.

Is Stankey coming at this from a specific angle? Of course. But is he wrong?

That’s the million-satellite-constellation question.