[bigfatkitten]

They don’t have any advantages at all.

People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.

[philipwhiuk]

For now there's a regulatory oversight advantage (or rather lack of same).

[bigfatkitten]

There’s a whole lot more oversight, from the radiocommunications and aviation safety regulators.

[iso1631]

Desert land is free. Floating data centres in the middle of the pacific is free.

If a state, or even rich billionaire, wanted to take out your data centre in low earth orbit, it's only a few million dollars to launch a retrograde rocket which explodes into 10 ton of shrapnel, or even less to forget the orbit and just launch it directly up.

[philipwhiuk]

You can do the same to the ones in the Pacific and desert too.

It's a declaration of war much the same.