Comment by mbesto

That’s ridiculous. Space is the least nation-state-dependent place to do computing in existence.

All proposed space computing has an incredibly short orbital lifespan (less than 5y).

Every single space launch capable rocket provider in the world is financially, regulatorily, and militarily joined at the hip to a single government. No launches are taking place without that government’s say-so.

Also, space infrastructure is incredibly vulnerable to attack by nation-states as many others in this thread have pointed out.

Putting data centers on ships in international waters would be just as effective at evading government control (i.e. not very) while being orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to build and operate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon

This is one of the early tipping points in the background of the game "Eclipse Phase", which I always found interesting:

--- >8 ---

The power of nation states is rooted in control of land and safety, as well as resources, which is an extension of the control of land. But once mining asteroids became economically viable, the connection between land and resources disappeared. Once space habitation in space and secretly developed weapon systems from space became viable, the connection between safety, habitation and land disappeared.

This allowed corporations and new organizations to rise to power large enough to challenge nation states. Those in power did feared to lose their power, which caused the great war which gave rise to the grey mass and destroyed earth.

--- 8< ---

It's a very cool back story, which gives rise to a rogue nanite swarm (the gray mass), which forces an evacuation of earth within days. The only way this was even possible was by uploading human minds onto storage and planting them in robots later on. Naturally, most humans are then forced to work for these corporations. Other humans are still biological and they don't like robots, to say the least.

I'm sorry, but this is stupid. It's the same dumb thinking behind Sealand: "we're outside state borders! nobody can touch us!", which was only true as long as nobody cared what they were doing. Once Sealand actually started angering people, the Royal Navy showed up and that was that. "Datacenters in space" wouldn't fare any better: multiple nations have successfully tested anti-satellite weapons.

If you can control satellites from the ground, then so can the government governing that ground location. An armed 10-person strike team could force SpaceX to access or even de-orbit the entire Starlink constellation. They don’t because doing so would be illegal and dangerous, not because it is somehow technically difficult.

If a company were to go on its own and build data centers in space only to avoid nation state jurisdiction, they better be prepares to defend that hardware in space.

If a country doesn't like what is happening they can shoot it down, and with no humans onboard or nations claiming jurisdiction there really isn't much to stop them or to answer for.

Except the people that run and manage that satellite will be on earth, under some nation state's rules...

By the same argument Google could start literal star wars by blowing up AWS data centres. Because it is the wild west up there right? No pesky laws.

If crypto were the reason for the orbital data centers, then an easier path would be to use crypto that doesn't require huge data centers. That's pretty much any proof-of-stake blockchain, especially the more decentralized ones.

Data centers in space is about leading investors to circumvent their brains and jump on the hype train at worst, and developing technology around data center infrastructure at best.

Microsoft did something similar with their submarine data center pilots. This gets more press because AI.

This is the only "advantage" I can see with space-based datacenters. Crypto will remain a joke but putting devices beyond the reach of ground-based jurisdictions is a libertarian dream. It will probably fail - you still need plenty of ground infrastructure.

Nation states can fire missiles at your space datacenter, bruh.