[derefr]

Eh. Space is just a place that's annoying to ship to. (With the one key advantage of having line-of-sight to arbitrary deployed IoT devices.)

"Underwater", meanwhile, is more of a mode of operation / design for data centers, with the goal of that simplifying (and decreasing costs for) cooling.

An underwater data center doesn't imply that the data center is actually off-shore to any large degree. I'd imagine they'd look more like undersea-cable landing points, built "into" a beach.

[matte_black]

This will accelerate global warming and kill off fragile ecosystems from all the heat being radiated to the oceans.

[kevinlou]

I tried looking for environmental impact studies for Microsoft's data center project, but all I could find were object tracking models that their team built for tracking marine life.

If a published study on this exists, I'd love to take a look.

[SiempreViernes]

Not likely, water is a good heat conductor so there will just be a area of slightly warmer water near the outlet. You might get a micro ecology with some tropical fish far from their normal grounds but nothing dramatic will happen.

It'll certainly not be worse for the environment than any normal data centre, unless it springs a leak and something toxic escapes.

[haney]

Maybe, but it could also reduce fossil fuels used to operate less efficient cooling systems in traditional data centers. I’d love to see a breakdown on the impact of each approach.