alt Hacker NewsYes but would these need to be in LEO? I would imagine that they would aim for farther orbits to spend a smaller percentage of their time in Earth's shadow
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ben_w • yesterday at 3:15 PM
Depends how cheap they can launch them.
Even very optimistic estimates (by people who aren't Elon Musk) say it will take a decade to get the costs low enough to be worthwhile for LEO; higher orbits are much more expensive.
Perhaps there will be communications nodes in LEO with high bandwidth directional links to heavy compute nodes in higher orbits? At some point I would assume that the jurisdiction of the FCC no longer applies? Or maybe you use laser links?
I still cannot believe it's economical to have "data centers in orbit" but I guess the truth will be seen in whether or not it actually happens.