It's so you don't have to ask anybody for permission. That's it.

Right now, 70% of the country is at least skeptical of DCs and at worst absolutely hate them. NIMBY is basically the rallying cry. That's why you go "up" (if they can make starship work). The physics is "hard" but doable, you can keep them cool enough in a sun synchronous orbit. The math pencils out. It's not my field, but back of the envelope math seems to work. Scott Manley has a video on it if you're skeptical.

But, people keep thinking about this like "return on investment" is the only thing driving this play. They're literally the only company with a mostly reusable system (unless you count that company trying in China?). They're the closest company to a fully reusable launch vehicle. They have a ton of government contracts with star shield. After Bezos' rocket blew up last week, there's basically nobody close to competing with starlink...

I am not a Musk fanboy, but, like, there is literally no other serious space competitor right now. I mean, "maybe" Boeing? But not really - they're years away...

So, like if you read about the Memphis Datacenter - Colossus I think? They're unable to get power, they're pulling in power from Mississippi to keep the thing running. You know how many times they have to ask permission for that? The infrastructure costs there just to power it start to get absurd too. Then the unending line of approvals and environmental impact studies and permits. For all the people saying, "it'd be cheaper on earth" it might be in terms of dollars, but if you can basically iterate entirely unfettered in space, it's the obvious choice if you can make it happen.

Like, seriously, go try to build something, there are a LOT of rules outside of rural areas. It's literally why my wife and I decided to build our cabin where we are building, because there were basically no restrictions. Meanwhile in town, my buddy's deck was a nightmare to permit... it was a deck, not bridge. Seriously, to all the people saying, "it's easier" go try to get something built in a big city or where you have to fight through permit hell.

These tech oligarch guys view this (I think rightly - it's one of the only things I view them as right on) as a race to AGI against the Chinese. We're in the lead right now, cool, but the Chinese have excess kilowatts and we don't. In fact, we don't have adequate power plant infrastructure at all and we couldn't get the power plants built if we wanted to (the Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson book Abundance touches on this topic if you're curious as to why). It's not going to happen.

But up? No NIMBYs in space (yet). So they're going to go where nobody will tell them "no." At least, that's what I would do if I owned a literal rocket company.

People are all looking at this stuff through the lens of "money" as if that matters hardly at all after AGI, lol. The analysts are looking at this like it's 1995. I mean, PE ratios are important, don't get me wrong, but after 2016, and Trump, and the applications of transformers, and the war in Ukraine (and current shit show in Iran), and the rising price of fuel, and, well I'll stop, the list goes on and on, but acting like the "normal" rules of investment apply is just silly. This stuff is about power, and he who controls access to orbit is worth a basically unlimited amount of money...

Do I wish it was happening differently? Yup. But hey, we decided to give up on space as a country like 50 years ago, maybe we can try to do cool stuff in space now.

>> It's so you don't have to ask anybody for permission. That's it.

This doesn't make sense because there's one party whose permission you always must ask, and that's the government. They are the ones who get to decide whether you can launch your rockets.

A more accurate version of your claim would be: datacenters in space allow you to deal with one party (i.e. the government) instead of many. So long as your relationship with that one party is good, your business plan is safe.