Eric and Johanna like to argue, including about whether or not they actually like to argue. In this installment of the podcast, we invite you to eavesdrop on one of the arguments we’ve been having lately. It’s about AI, space, SpaceX, Elon Musk, data centers and AI data centers sent to space by Elon Musk and SpaceX. We also touch on another kind of entity called humans and whether or not all the aforementioned things are enabling their beautiful capacity for creativity or their tendency towards destruction.
We recorded this a little while back but it’s become especially relevant now with all the fuss on Substack and elsewhere about this platform’s new Pangram feature. If you’re not familiar, we asked AI to describe it, and the first few tries kind of sucked but we kept at it until it sounded pretty good and now I’m hacking it all up and adding my own rambling to it, because that’s what it means to be a writer in 2026 who isn’t so precious about the tools he uses that he insists on raising his own geese in the backyard just to pluck a quill from a grumpy gander each morning just to have a fresh implement for the inkwell.
Curious what Pangram thinks about that last paragraph. Kinda sounds like Grok, I guess. Anyway….
Pangram is an AI detector, and it’s raising questions about what counts as human writing. Either way, we’re using AI now, whether to write or to check for it, and that raises the bigger question of where all these data centers are going to go, which brings us back around to the argument we had on this podcast. (Here’s where AI comes in hard to cook up some copy…)
Episode summary
We’re off the grid and off the cuff in this one: Johanna and Eric dive into a full-on debate about whether we should colonize space, put AI data centers in orbit, and what happens to the night sky when we fill it with satellites and mirrors. Starting from Johanna’s recent essays—I Don’t Want to Colonize the Moon and Preserve the Night Sky—we ask whether techno‑optimism is helping or hurting a planet that’s already in crisis.
What we talk about
Why “colonize space” feels like repeating Earth’s mistakes on a bigger stage, from lunar factories to orbital solar mirrors.
Reflect Orbital’s plan to hang mirrors in orbit to beam light down at night—and why turning disasters and solar farms into artificial daylight feels dystopian when you love the dark sky.
SpaceX’s proposal for a massive satellite network and an AI computing cloud in orbit, and why Eric is cautiously excited while Johanna sees more planetary risk than reward.
A scientist-led computer simulation showing a permanent artificial glow to the night sky from satellite swarms, and the potential fallout for birds, insects, food systems and mental health.
The bigger question: when new technologies make life more “convenient,” are they actually drawing us further away from food, land, shelter and the skills that keep us alive ?
Off-grid context from the high desert
We argue all this from an off-grid homestead in the high desert of New Mexico, where the night sky is part of our daily life and not just a backdrop for launches. Living off grid, we rely on some of the same technologies—satellites, GPS, internet, and now AI—to make this life possible, even as we question their long‑term costs. That tension sits at the heart of the episode: how to love tools like AI while staying honest about data centers, energy, and planetary limits.
Techno‑optimism vs ecological reality
Eric makes the case that big technologies like the space race, satellites, and now AI have historically opened up incredible possibilities, from GPS to long-distance communication that lets us live off grid and still work. Johanna pushes back, asking whether those gains justify the extraction, pollution and disconnection involved—and whether AI is solving anything as important as climate change, cancer, or capitalism itself. Between the arguments, you’ll hear how we each wrestle with hope, skepticism and the desire to keep our literal skies dark.
Related posts and episodes
If you’d like more context on where we’re coming from, you can read or listen to:
I Don’t Want to Colonize the Moon – on sacredness, space races and why we don’t need to leave Earth to feel awe.
Preserve the Night Sky – reflection on orbital mirrors, light pollution and what we lose when we erase the dark.
Start Here – the best place to meet our off-grid family, how we got here, and what we’re trying to build in the high desert.
How Tos – practical guides and hot tips for off-grid living and more sustainable choices on the ground, where they matter most.
Archive – essays on climate, uncertainty, and simple living that frame the bigger questions we raise in this debate.
