No. It's currently a fantasy. Even if the cost of getting payloads to orbit decreased another x100, you still have the issues of radiation and heat dissipation.
This is an ambitious bet, with some possibility of failure but it should say a lot that these companies are investing in them.
I wonder what people think, are these companies so naive?
Edit: Elon, Sundar, Jensen, Jeff are all interested in this. Even China is.
What conspiracy is going on here to explain it? Why would they all put money into this if it is so obvious to all of you that it is not going to work?
The reason for this "data centers in space" is the same as the "sustained human colony on Mars". It is all pie in the sky ideas to drive valuation and increase Musk's wealth.
Just a small sampling of previous failed Musk promises: - demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York by the end of 2017 - "autonomous ride hailing in probably half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year" - “thousands” of Optimus humanoid robots working in Tesla factories by the end of 2025." - Tesla semi trucks rollout (Pepsi paid for 100 semis in 2017, and deliveries started in 2022, and now 8 years later they have received half of them.)
Tesla from LA to NY - https://www.thedrive.com/news/a-tesla-actually-drove-itself-...
Thousand of Optimus Robots...just announced closing a factory to have them focus on robot production - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/28/tesla-ending-model-s-x-produ...
SpaceX rewriting the entire economic formula for space launches, accounting for almost 90% of all launches globally last year, becoming a critical piece of the Department of Defense while also launching Starlink globally.
Neuralink let's people control computers with their brain, even playing video games. They're working on an implant to cure blindness right now.
https://neuralink.com/trials/visual-prosthesis/
I get that the man is politically unpopular in some circles, but it's really difficult to bet against him at this point. So far, the biggest criticism has been that it took a little longer than he initially said to deliver...but he did deliver.
This trope
> It is all pie in the sky ideas to drive valuation and increase Musk's wealth.
Really needs to stop. This is based on a naive interpretation of how wealth gets created. Musk has an amazing reputation getting things done and making things that people like. Whether you like him as a person or not, he has done stuff in the past and that's reason enough to believe him now.
My napkin math says that, for a system at around 75°C, you would need about 13,000 square meters of radiators in space to reject 10 MW of heat.
[1] https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalabl...
You are saying they are "hardly betting on it". This is grossly false and I wonder why you would write that? Its clearly a serious bet, with lots of people working on it.
> Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we’re just a decade away from a new normal of extraterrestrial data centers
Its surely a high risk bet but that's how Google has been operating for a while. But why would you say they are hardly betting on it?
As a counter question: do you think Google is not serious about it?
