lemmydividebyzeroDatacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
MwaNo, that works well with Starlink for example. But only because it’s in low earth orbit. In geostationary orbit You do in fact have a horrible ping.
Not being familiar with the details of this Elon brain fart I would hope they didn’t aim for geostationary… Because why?? Then again who knows with that idiot.
If it’s close enough for respectable latency, it’s close enough to experience drag. Given the maddeningly high power/cooling and resultant large surface area, then that satellite will have a tendency to incur re-entry.
So either close enough for “ok” latency but will burn up relatively soon or high enough to keep an orbit longer but terrible latency.
Hmm. Assuming you have some small hydrazine or whatever booster you could maintain a low orbit for a while. But yes not endlessly. That bring said there is a middle ground between 400km and 34000km that might provide for a good orbit and acceptable ping. That all depends on the application of course.