But since building a datacenter almost anywhere on the planet is more convenient than outer space, surely you can find some suitable location/government. Or put it on a boat, which is still 100 times more sensible than outer space.

If you think there is no papework necessary for launching satellites, you are very very wrong.

It's also infinitly easier to get 24/7 unadulterated sunlight for your solar panels.

I mean, you don't have zoning in space, but you have things like international agreements to avoid, you know, catastrophic human development situations like kessler syndrome.

All satellites launched into orbit these days are required to have de-orbiting capabilities to "clean up" after EOL.

I dunno, two years ago I would have said municipal zoning probably ain't as hard to ignore as international treaties, but who the hell knows these days.

> is spending 90% of their bullshit budget on battlig state and local governments

Source? I can't immediately find anything like that.

that may have been the case before but it is not anymore. I live in Northern VA, the capital of the data centers and it is easier to build one permit-wise than a tree house. also see provisions in OBBB

What counts towards a bullshit budget? Permitting is a drop in the bucket compared to construction costs.

This is a huge one. What Musk is looking for is freedom from land acquisition. Everything else is an engineering and physics problem that he will somehow solve. The land acquisition problem is out of his hands and he doesn't want to deal with politicians. He learned from building out the Memphis DC.