Could data centres ever be built in orbit?

A start-up called Starcloud has plans to do just that.

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Where is the best place to build a data centre? Not on Earth at all but in orbit, claims Philip Johnston, chief executive of Starcloud. The cost of launching things into space is falling fast and once it has fallen far enough, "it's completely inevitable that all data centres will go into space", he says.

An orbiting data centre, in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous polar orbit that keeps it in continuous sunlight, could harness abundant solar energy. (With no atmosphere or clouds to scatter or block the Sun's rays, a given solar array generates five times as much energy in orbit as it would on Earth.) The frigid vacuum of space should make cooling easier, too, because cooling systems are more efficient when the ambient temperature is lower. SpaceX's Starlink and other satellite-internet constellations can provide fast connectivity with the ground. Computing clusters could be arranged in three dimensions, rather than two as on Earth, to speed up data transfer.