alt Hacker NewsThe people who want to put data centers in orbit must be either much smarter than me, or much dumber than me, because I just don't get how that makes any technical or economic sense.
Of course, it's possible nobody actually wants to do this, they just want to get funded to do it. (Old joke: "I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant...")
Replies
clumsysmurf • yesterday at 11:23 PM
Perhaps the reasons are not technical. Perhaps it has more to do with jurisdiction, not being physically dependent (or susceptible) to any physical state.
From what I've seen (Google paper, IIRC), it only makes sense economically if Musk's stretch goals for price/kg to orbit for Starship become true.
Technically it's fine, just take something like Starlink and use most of the power for compute rather than for comms.
But financially, it depends on price to orbit being extremely low; not just lower than Falcon, but as low as Musk's best public claims about what may be coming at some point.