[sjwright]

I imagine SpaceX could eventually perform the majority of routing in orbit, with packets returning to earth for the "last mile".

If they're successful, you could potentially see a high bandwidth SpaceX link on the roof of every major data center on the planet. They could be self-reliant for connections to every major online service.

If they're very successful, you could potentially see data providers like Netflix and CloudFlare joining SpaceX in orbit, most likely embedded into a future SpaceX satellite...

[tbabb]

Space is just about the worst place to put a datacenter.

Price to orbit is thousands of dollars per kilo. Maintainability is zilch. And you have lots of cosmic rays flinging charged particles into your sensitive memory banks, flipping random bits. Also, heat management is very difficult.

I couldn't think of a worse place to put a datacenter than space. The bottom of the ocean would make more sense.

[mtanski]

Netflix ISP CDN in space. Now that'd be something seriously cool.

[jessaustin]

It's funny; Netflix is one provider that doesn't need low latency so they would be fine with more traditional satellite orbits.

[barkerja]

It wouldn't be a wise decision; what if they one day decide to enter into live programming (sports, news, etc.), where latency does matter?

[jessaustin]

Latency doesn't really matter for that either. Seeing a football play 5 seconds too late doesn't hurt anyone.

[imtringued]

And existing streaming services already have a latency of several seconds. Twitch for example can have a delay from 5 to 20 seconds or more. Unless you're using WebRTC or similar technologies you won't see latencies below a second.

[NullPrefix]

>Seeing a football play 5 seconds too late doesn't hurt anyone. Only if the audience do not know about it.