| ▲ | Gazoche 13 hours ago | |
Cons of orbital data centers: - Ludicrously expensive to setup - Need radiation-hardened silicon - Ludicrously expensive maintenance requiring highly specialized operators (a.k.a astronauts) - High risk of losing the entire equipment to a rocket failure (not infrequent even for modern launch vehicles) - Supplying enough electrical power would be extremely difficult - Cooling would be extremely difficult - Geosynchronous orbits have at least 200ms of communication latency - Lower orbits means the data center would not stay in place and require complicated tracking antennae and/or a communication mesh a la Starlink, again increasing latency and complexity Pros of orbital data centers: - ?????? ...why are we doing this again? | ||