Comment by IX-103

One mistake that the article seems to make is to assume that the data center is in one huge satellite.

I think a better model would be a fleet of rack or server level satellites. That significantly reduces the heat and cooling requirements and improves redundancy since losing a single satellite sure to radiation would be less significant. Further, due to economies of scale these satellites could be produced in mass, similar to the starlink satellites of today.

One issue is that these satellites would be to be connected via high bandwidth free space optical links instead of Ethernet, requiring precise formations, but that is currently being tested by multiple companies.

That being said, I don't see this ever being cheaper than terrestrial data centers. I just don't think the idea is as stupid as the article implies - it just requires doing things differently than NASA has done in the past.