this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Self landing rockets were practically impossible not that long ago. Self driving cars were practically impossible not that long ago.
There’s nothing fundamentally impossible about orbital data centres. The main factor against it is the $/kg of payload into space. That’s one of the many issues SpaceX is working to solve, and there’s nothing to suggest they won’t get there.
Other people have already explained the topic in sufficient detail, so I'll just leave a quote from a former NASA engineer and a link to their article.
Source: Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
It all comes down to $/kg of payload. There’s infinite space up there.
How is this a rational argument? With infinite money we could put the Empire State building on Venus but it would be really fucking stupid.