Comment by nicoburns
13 hours ago
Sure, but cooling a starlink in space is a lot more difficult than cooling a starlink on earth would be. And unlike starlink which absolutely must be in space in order to function, data centers work just fine on the ground.
This. There's no scenario where it's cheaper to put them in space.
I think there's a lot of a room for an energy play that will ultimately obviate the enormously costly terrestrial energy supply chain.
You can just use the cheap solar panels that were gonna be launched into space (expensive) and not launch them into space (not expensive) and plug them into some batteries (still, cheaper than a rocket launch)
You forget the "in 2 years" part.
It will cost less to put it in low earth orbit than it will be to purchase land for it at any reasonable location.