alt Hacker NewsSpace data centers are physically possible but don't make financial sense. The total cost of an orbital datacenter over five years is at least 2–3x that of a terrestrial one.
But those economics don't matter to SpaceX, because the main purpose of its orbital data centers is to create a use case for Starship. Starship has to fly frequently to iron out the kinks, encounter and fix rare (1/1000) failure situations, and optimize the launch cadence which pushes launch costs down. Plus Starship needs to fly a lot before it's ready for crewed flight. The long-term goal is a Starship optimized for crewed interplanetary travel. Orbital data centers are a payload that bring in some revenue, and provide a reason to launch constantly.
It's the same thing they did with Starlink to make Falcon 9 as reliable and rapidly reusable as it is.
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My guess is: it just sounds cool.
Like the cybertruck
it sort of makes sense, if the need for that compute is in space and not terrestrial.
In my mind its the same sort of thing as mining in space. it makes no sense to mine ores in space for delivery to earth (unless its something exotic that you cant get on earth). Mining in space is best used for manufacturing in space (and furthering building in space)... then the cost benefit ratio suddenly flips hard in the "worth it" direction.
2-3x sounds like a very low estimate.
There’s so much data center capacity being built all over the Earth. Thousands of large projects across US / China / Europe / Middle East. It would be astonishing if something that’s never been done before could be so cost-competitive immediately.
Starlink wasn’t the first time LEO communications constellations were attempted. Multiple 1990s projects did it (Iridium, GlobalStar…) and went bankrupt.
It took 30 years to make the concept work. SpaceX investors seem to be assuming the space data center business will be immediately viable.