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Notes -
The bull case for data centers in space is that the bottlenecks for getting data centers constructed are going to be
a) permitting / regulation
b) power generation / storage
Data centers in space have the potential to solve both of these bottlenecks, in exchange for introducing the manyfold engineering challenges of getting them into space (which other posts have already described in great detail).
I'm not entirely sure I believe this thesis, but it's at least fairly plausible to me that the engineering challenges can be overcome while NIMBYism gets ever more dysfunctional and terrestial power generation remains a bottleneck.
It has nothing to do with airstrikes though; any serious nation already can or soon will be able to strike assets in LEO all the same, not to mention that if push comes to shove the owners and operators of data centers in space are very much going to be within the reach of nation states.
SSO, but you're still correct.
The bear case for data centers in space is that the engineering challenges need to be overcome in the right order. I know the anti-data-center craze is literally crazy right now, but earth-bound solar+battery-powered passively-cooled centers are probably no more likely to be strangled by red tape than orbital centers. The orbital centers may look cheaper in back-of-napkin calculations right now, but only because battery prices haven't yet crashed as far as solar panel prices have and chip prices are so high that you want to run everything on a 100% duty cycle. If battery supply improves enough, or chip supply does (or if chip demand falls), the numbers change.
Solar prices are already creeping up as China has ended subsidies and the global demand is surging. The Chinese will do all they can but at the end of the day PV panels have scarce physical inputs (like silver). The lowest realistic price for batteries that I've seen was something like $15/kWh (if Sodium-Ion works out at scale). That's about $300000 for year-round battery+solar 1MWh supply (given seasonality and losses), probably more. Plus immensely more costly solar installation (lower area efficiency, overbuilding due to day-night and seasonal cycles, weather protection, land)…
Might as well just yeet it into orbit.
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