[HenryBemis]

That's a good enough reason to pull it out, replace/upgrade the equip, and drop it back in with the new setup (new sources of energy), and if they get the whole thing to transmit wireless-ly with a 1% failures per 2 years (8 out of the 855 servers) then it's a truly set-and-forget thing. And they can be bringing them up every 2-5-10 years to replace/upgrade the HW and drop it back in.

[entropicdrifter]

One would imagine that the signal to noise ratio for wireless data transmission in the ocean would be pretty abysmal. That said, there's no reason why they couldn't just run a fiber optic cable out from it, as long as it's designed to rotate around said cable.

[HenryBemis]

I thought of the cable solution, but that would have some wear and tear if the capsule gets to move around. I was imagining a periscope-y antenna, in the form of a buoy.

[theelous3]

Short range high power wireless to cable. Basically cable but with a wear buffer.

[eru]

Microsoft probably has enough money that they could leave the original one in, and pop down a new one with the new green energy.

(Of course, individual projects still have finite budgets.)

[pvaldes]

I assume that the project approved by the UK government specifies some requirements about environment protection and the fate of the material.

[cutemonster]

Building a new one would take more time

[eru]

Yes, but they can build multiple in parallel.

[Cerium]

It would need an antenna buoy as wireless does not transmit well in salt water.

[manderley]

If that was the reason, we'd know about it from the PR release. This must have been a failure.