Just adds a bunch of new problems. ”We need a replacement cable. Guess we have to send a rocket and it’s gonna take a few months to plan”

And replaces them with the famously environmentally friendly launch vehicle business.

It doesn’t?

> power

It still needs power, you’re most likely going to do it with solar if you’re on earth orbit but that isn’t free and you will have periods of no sunlight so a significant amount of batteries will be needed.

> cooling

Cooling off in a vacuum is hard. You’ll need radiators to emit the heat, you’ll need a lot of radiators for data center level heat. This is more mass you need to get into orbit

> location

The location is in space, it’s significantly more expensive to get mass into space than it is to move it someone else on the planet

> environmental

The day to day operations of a space based data center seem like they would be a benefit, but I haven’t seen the math on the environmental cost of the rocket launches vs the lifetime of a terrestrial data center

> staffing

Why would the location in space vs terrestrial change the staffing at all? Any technological change that could/would reduce staffing could be applied to terrestrial data centers as well

> physical security

You’re more secure from people, but now you’ve introduced the physical security risk of space debris where something with the mass of pocket lint could cause serious damage if it impacts your system.

The whole space data center idea is just Musk trying to gin up more demand for his SpaceX IPO with no real benefit behind the idea. He’s been lying like this for years for money like with “Full Self Driving”(lol, don’t take your hands off the wheel because we’ll disengage right before a crash and it’s your problem) or his “robots”(actually remote controlled by humans). I don’t know why anyone listens to him anymore if he doesn’t show up with concrete results first.

It’s like people want to be conned.