They don’t have any advantages at all.

People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.

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philipwhiuk 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

For now there's a regulatory oversight advantage (or rather lack of same).

	▲	bigfatkitten a day ago \| parent [-]
		There’s a whole lot more oversight, from the radiocommunications and aviation safety regulators.

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iso1631 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Desert land is free. Floating data centres in the middle of the pacific is free.

If a state, or even rich billionaire, wanted to take out your data centre in low earth orbit, it's only a few million dollars to launch a retrograde rocket which explodes into 10 ton of shrapnel, or even less to forget the orbit and just launch it directly up.

	▲	philipwhiuk 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You can do the same to the ones in the Pacific and desert too. It's a declaration of war much the same.