Yeah, the Data Center NIMBY crowd is making these look real good right now.

A hypothetical operational space data center will cost a multiple over a similar terrestrial facility. It would be cheaper/more efficient to offer a municipality or its citizens a fraction of that multiple to secure approvals, now that the bullying approach is running out of steam.

Instead of installing MWs of illegal gas generation and also still causing local electricity rates to spike, why not arrange to buy down the electricity of local ratepayers and also comply with existing laws & regulations?

It's worth asking why operators aren't doing that yet. I suspect it's because neither OAI nor Anthropic have an extra $50B-$100B to put out at the moment. We'll see what happens post-IPO.

Never going to happen. Yeah, we might get to a point where lots of people object to them in lots of places. But nobody allowing them anywhere? Mongolia wouldn't let you build in a little corner of the vast steppe? Algeria wouldn't let you plop down in a nice patch of unused Sahara?

The worst that would happen is that it becomes difficult to build in convenient places. That certainly would be annoying. But the problem with space as the solution is that space is by far the least convenient place imaginable, with the possible exception of the bottom of the deep ocean.

That's an if, not a when. A very big, hugely improbable if. Nobody? really?

The cost of getting them there will be absurd and even if someone was willing to fund it, where do you put the heat they will generate?