Not even a little; doesn’t pass napkin math. It doesn’t solve any problems while adding a litany of new ones: massive radiators for heat rejection, radiation hardening, and enormous launch + repair costs (assuming repairs are even possible). The idea exists to separate investors from their money; the product is the funding round.

> Do data centers in space actually make sense?

No. It's currently a fantasy. Even if the cost of getting payloads to orbit decreased another x100, you still have the issues of radiation and heat dissipation.

I've always assumed that the answer to this would be no. However, I also always assumed that a huge space-based internet system would be both expensive and impractical for bandwidth and latency.

Starlink has largely defied those expectations thanks to their approach to optimize launch costs.

It is possible that I'm overlooking some similar fundamental advancement that would make this less impractical than it sounds. I'm still really skeptical.