Mastodawn

I think this is well worth reading. I've been a bit frustrated by some over-confident claims that data centres in space are literally impossible due to the cooling issues alone, and other claims that those issues are fairly minor. I am nowhere near close to being familiar with all the real-world engineering nitty gritty; I understand a fair bit of thermodynamics, but that is not enough to really settle things. FWIW, the arguments here seem well grounded in physics and the technological/economic/legal issues raised strike me as plausible.

https://robtow.substack.com/p/spacex-ipo-orbital-data-centers-and

SpaceX IPO, Orbital Data Centers, and Three Card Monte: The Cloud Is Not Above the World

Rob Tow · Nova Lux, New Mexico, USA, Sol III · 17 June 2026

Rob Tow

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Greg Egan 3d ago

Can we make the radiators much smaller by running them, say, twice as hot, and actively pumping heat from the electronics into these hotter surfaces?

Yes, of course we can, the laws of thermodynamics are fine with that. However ...

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Erin

@gregeganSF fwiw my take, with a rusty aerospace degree, is that the obvious technical issues ARE surmountable but still immense burdens, making these things obviously much worse than terrestrial data centers.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that these people intend to test the laws around orbital offshoring, which on a surface read would seem to indicate the laws of the launching country would apply, but "so enforce it then" will be the real test.