Comment by Gazoche

Cons of orbital data centers:

- Ludicrously expensive to setup

- Need radiation-hardened silicon

- Ludicrously expensive maintenance requiring highly specialized operators (a.k.a astronauts)

- High risk of losing the entire equipment to a rocket failure (not infrequent even for modern launch vehicles)

- Supplying enough electrical power would be extremely difficult

- Cooling would be extremely difficult

- Geosynchronous orbits have at least 200ms of communication latency

- Lower orbits means the data center would not stay in place and require complicated tracking antennae and/or a communication mesh a la Starlink, again increasing latency and complexity

Pros of orbital data centers:

- ??????

...why are we doing this again?