It’s definitely a harder technical problem than regular buildings, but it’s not absurd. I think the biggest risk factor is the disposition of the hardware after a life cycle: deorbiting and vaporizing tons of servers would be pretty bad, but dropping them to the surface somehow for reclamation and recycling is possible.

Nobody that says the answer is obvious has put enough expertise and thought into it. In my experience, a bunch of qualified engineers saying “well, I guess we could, maybe 🤔” is an incubator for innovation.

Orbital data centers, part 1: There’s no way this is economically viable, right? - Ars Technica share.google/d26ZkArGh2UaLMGKl