Datacenters in space is about circumventing nation states masked as ambitions to generate more power.
Follow the rationale:
1. Nation states ultimately control three key infrastructure pieces required to run data centers (a) land (protected by sovereign armed forces) (b) internet / internet infra (c) electricity. If crypto ever became a legitimate threat, nation states could simply seize any one of or all these three and basically negate any use of crypto.
2. So, if you have data centers that no longer rely on power derived from a nation state, land controller by a nation state or connectivity provided by the nation state's cabling infra, then you can always access your currency and assets.
That’s ridiculous. Space is the least nation-state-dependent place to do computing in existence.
All proposed space computing has an incredibly short orbital lifespan (less than 5y).
Every single space launch capable rocket provider in the world is financially, regulatorily, and militarily joined at the hip to a single government. No launches are taking place without that government’s say-so.
Also, space infrastructure is incredibly vulnerable to attack by nation-states as many others in this thread have pointed out.
Putting data centers on ships in international waters would be just as effective at evading government control (i.e. not very) while being orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to build and operate.
Recently the USA blew out some some boats in international waters and came back to finish off the survivors, despite thin evidence and no due process, while maintaining that it was legal. If those data centers on ships ever become declared as a 'threat to national security' then they might get the same treatment.
I think GP's point is that an advanced nation-state could just as easily shoot down an orbiting data center as an oceanic data center and that "international space" offers an equally flimsy defense as "international waters" but a much larger price.
Swarms of satellites need to maneuver, which includes maneuvering directly toward the atmosphere.
It would take zero anti-satellite weapons to take down Starlink. Just point a good old fashioned gun at the SpaceX engineer who can issue maneuvering commands to the satellites.
You only need to destroy a few. Then you have a cloud of debris that will take down the rest or at the very least force them to use all their fuel making evasive manoeuvres.
How absurd is absurdly decentralized, here. A hundred ground stations? Thousands? Do they really have more than can be shut down by the FBI domestically and blown up by the USAF internationally?
And how does decentralized ground infrastructure save you from a centralized executive?
Over one hundred ground stations, spread across the world. More on demand - Starlink allows one to use terminals as makeshift ground stations in a pinch.
Uncle Sam could bring Starlink down, probably. For anyone else, that would pretty much require WW3.
Executives don't matter as much as you think they do. No credible executive is going to cave to random death threats, and carrying them out would cause new executives.
Now, would SpaceX eventually become a shell of its former self without Musk calling the shots? Maybe. But if the shell you're worrying about is Starlink orbital shell, and the time you're worrying about is today and not in ten years? Killing Musk doesn't help you much.
You think Musk would refuse, and give up his freedom or even his life instead of complying with a US government demand? The point isn’t to actually kill him. The point is that you can, and you use that to force compliance.
If those ships chose to not fly a flag, they'd even have justification to do so. And if they did choose to fly a flag, then that country would have the responsibility to police them, and is the US complained to that country, that country might just withdraw protection anyway. Data center ships just want to loiter where convenient, they're not cigarette boats flying along at 100mph... no way to evade a navy that wants to blow them out of the water.
Microsoft was talking about submarine data centers powered by tidal forces in the early 2000s.
There have been talks of data centers on Sealand-like nation states.
Geothermal ...
Exotic data center builds will always be hyped. Always be within the realm of feasibility when cost is no object, but probably outside of practicality or need.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems called dibs on next last year by saying they’re gonna have a Dominion (Virginia) commercial site up and running in the early 2030s.
Whats less well known is as the Ionsphere heats up the upper atmosphere, it bulges out into space like a tyre sidewall bulge. This has the effect of putting an atmosphere in the path of LEO satellite, which then causes the LEO satellite to fall to earth because they are not designed to travel through an atmosphere.
Joule heating is the most important one which can alter the thermospheric dynamics quite significantly.[1]
Do you have a source that you can measurably affect drag on satellites using a ground based Ionospheric heater? How much is the atmosphere actually going to heat up from a few megawatts?
This is one of the early tipping points in the background of the game "Eclipse Phase", which I always found interesting:
--- >8 ---
The power of nation states is rooted in control of land and safety, as well as resources, which is an extension of the control of land. But once mining asteroids became economically viable, the connection between land and resources disappeared. Once space habitation in space and secretly developed weapon systems from space became viable, the connection between safety, habitation and land disappeared.
This allowed corporations and new organizations to rise to power large enough to challenge nation states. Those in power did feared to lose their power, which caused the great war which gave rise to the grey mass and destroyed earth.
--- 8< ---
It's a very cool back story, which gives rise to a rogue nanite swarm (the gray mass), which forces an evacuation of earth within days. The only way this was even possible was by uploading human minds onto storage and planting them in robots later on. Naturally, most humans are then forced to work for these corporations. Other humans are still biological and they don't like robots, to say the least.
I'm sorry, but this is stupid. It's the same dumb thinking behind Sealand: "we're outside state borders! nobody can touch us!", which was only true as long as nobody cared what they were doing. Once Sealand actually started angering people, the Royal Navy showed up and that was that. "Datacenters in space" wouldn't fare any better: multiple nations have successfully tested anti-satellite weapons.
> Once Sealand actually started angering people, the Royal Navy showed up and that was that.
What did the royal navy do? There is no mention of the UK using force against sealand in either the Wikipedia page or this BBC article about sealand. (Though obviously the royal navy could retake sealand if they wanted)
If a company were to go on its own and build data centers in space only to avoid nation state jurisdiction, they better be prepares to defend that hardware in space.
If a country doesn't like what is happening they can shoot it down, and with no humans onboard or nations claiming jurisdiction there really isn't much to stop them or to answer for.
If you can control satellites from the ground, then so can the government governing that ground location. An armed 10-person strike team could force SpaceX to access or even de-orbit the entire Starlink constellation. They don’t because doing so would be illegal and dangerous, not because it is somehow technically difficult.
The Outer Space Treaty is very very clear: anything launched into space is the responsibility of the country that launched it. Even if a private company payts for it and operates it, it's still the responsibility of the launching nation. Even if you launch from international waters, your operating company is still registered to a specific country, and the company is made up of citizens of one or more countries, and it is those countries which are responsible for the satellites. Those countries, in fact, have the responsibility to make sure that their citizens follow their laws and regulations. Unless you and your entire team are self-sustaining on that datacenter in outer space (maybe possible a century from now? Maybe not possible ever), you will be hunted down by the proper authorities and held to account for your actions. There is no magic "space is beyond the law" rules; it is just as illegal- and you are just as vulnerable to being arrested- for work done on a datacenter in space as work done on a datacenter on the ground.
Spy satellites maneuver so that no one can tell who launched them, or when. If these satellites can do the same, good luck pinning responsibility on someone on the ground. Hell, with Musk's low orbit network, he could probably even provide connectivity to them in a plausibly-deniable manner.
A data center on an orbit that is only known to the operators makes it difficult to use as a data center in a meaningful way - where do you point your uplink?
Spy satellites are individual craft. Proposals tossed about suggest significant constellates to give sufficient coverage to the land.
Suggestions involving square kilometers of solar power are not exactly things that would be easy to hide.
> Data centers in space. The problem is that data centers take up a ton of space and they need a huge amount of energy. Enter StarCloud. This is the beginning of a future where most new data centers are being built in space. They're starting small, but the goal is to build massive orbital data centers that will make computing more efficient and less of a burden on the limited resources down here on Earth.
These aren't small things. You can't hide it.
> And so we're building with a vision to build extremely large full 40 megawatt data centers. It's about 100 tons. It's what you can fit in one full Starship halo bay.
No, this is not true. First of all, every nation is required by space law to publish the initial orbits of every object they launch, as part of that taking responsibility I mentioned earlier.
The US Government further publishes tracking on pretty much every single thing in orbit of the earth larger than a few centimeters, to help satellite operators avoid space debris. They do obfuscate the current orbit of their own spy satellites (only publishing their initial orbit), but other countries and even private citizens around the world keep obsessive tabs on these things (e.g. https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/). This sort of thing is easily within the reach of even a medium sized nation state that was interested in the investment: just need a couple of big ole radars and you can do it just like the US does. So if you do try and hide the resources of a nation-state can easily counter.
The solution to oppressive government is not technological, it's political. Prevent countries from going bad, retrieve the ones that have gone bad, it works out a lot better for everyone.
Bitcoin is a great example of something outside of jursidictions. Now look at how much BTC the FBI has seized. In practice, power is gonna power. The US, Russia or China can take out your data centre unless you play by whatever the rules are. If not physically blow up you need to trade, you need a country for ground operations etc. You need a downlink. Being in space meaning no jurisdiction is plain rediculous.
If crypto were the reason for the orbital data centers, then an easier path would be to use crypto that doesn't require huge data centers. That's pretty much any proof-of-stake blockchain, especially the more decentralized ones.
Data centers in space is about leading investors to circumvent their brains and jump on the hype train at worst, and developing technology around data center infrastructure at best.
Microsoft did something similar with their submarine data center pilots. This gets more press because AI.
This is the only "advantage" I can see with space-based datacenters. Crypto will remain a joke but putting devices beyond the reach of ground-based jurisdictions is a libertarian dream. It will probably fail - you still need plenty of ground infrastructure.
Follow the rationale:
1. Nation states ultimately control three key infrastructure pieces required to run data centers (a) land (protected by sovereign armed forces) (b) internet / internet infra (c) electricity. If crypto ever became a legitimate threat, nation states could simply seize any one of or all these three and basically negate any use of crypto.
2. So, if you have data centers that no longer rely on power derived from a nation state, land controller by a nation state or connectivity provided by the nation state's cabling infra, then you can always access your currency and assets.