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Economics of Orbital vs Terrestrial Data Centers

andrewmccalip.com · 2,859 words · saved by 2 readers

Before we get nerd sniped by the shiny engineering details, ask the only question that matters. Why compute in orbit? Why should a watt or a flop 250 miles up be more valuable than one on the surface? What advantage justifies moving something as mundane as matrix multiplication into LEO? That "why" is almost missing from the public conversation. People jump straight to hardware and hand-wave the business case, as if the economics are self-evident. They aren't. A lot of the energy here is FOMO and aesthetic futurism, not a grounded value proposition. Note: This page is built from publicly available information and first-principles modeling. No proprietary data. These are my personal thoughts and do not represent the views of any company or organization. $79.0B $16.6B $79.0B $16.6B Ilove space. I live and breathe it. I'm lucky enough to brush the heavens with my own metal and code, and I want nothing more than a booming orbital space economy that creates the flywheel that makes space jus

Before we get nerd sniped by the shiny engineering details, ask the only question that matters. Why compute in orbit? Why should a watt or a flop 250 miles up be more valuable than one on the surface? What advantage justifies moving something as mundane as matrix multiplication into LEO? That "why" is almost missing from the public conversation. People jump straight to hardware and hand-wave the business case, as if the economics are self-evident. They aren't. A lot of the energy here is FOMO and aesthetic futurism, not a grounded value proposition. Note: This page is built from publicly avail

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