Orbital data centers, part 1: There’s no way this is economically viable, right?

“This is not physically impossible; it’s only a question of whether this is a rational thing.” Editor's note: This is the first of three feature articles Ars is publishing to explore the financial, technical, and competitive dimensions of orbital data centers. Although the idea of putting data centers into space has long been discussed on a theoretical basis, the technology has rapidly become a red-hot topic. This series will attempt to ground-truth some of the rhetoric flying around. This first installment takes a look at the core economic argument surrounding orbital datacenters; subsequent articles will explore detailed cost modeling at scale, the technical challenges involved, and the landscape of competitors. Let’s start with the basics. What, exactly, is an orbital data center? On the ground, data centers are typically large, warehouse-sized facilities filled with racks of storage and servers, and usually some high-speed networking gear to connect everything. A data center can be small or large, but the ones SpaceX is looking to supplant are of the big kind—the ones operated by major industry players like Amazon Web Services and Google, which provide most of the online servic