[rincebrain]

The problem is that you need humans to run datacenters, and so that puts ceilings on how far away from humans you can put them without the humans no longer being willing to commute there.

And the cost of building all the infra to support humans living in an area that humans are not already populating is enormous.

[CamperBob2]

Well, evidently you don't need humans to run datacenters, if we're talking about launching them into LEO!

Here's an idea, let's do this instead: we put them in the desert, or on boats or zeppelins or whatever, and we pretend they're in space. If anybody asks, those fuckers are in space, man. Computin' in the cosmos.

[kybernetikos]

> you need humans to run datacenters.

As far as I can tell from random articles online, it seems that as a rule of thumb, you need about 6 humans +1.5 humans per megawatt - and that's just for running the datacenter part, different people maintain the power generation infrastructure. Now, if you have to house those people in space or fly them up whenever they have to do anything, that's going to destroy your budget.

If you want to assume a level of automation that makes that unnecessary, that's fine, but then you need to also assume that same level of automation in earth based data centers too, and everything that goes with that.