[Dylan16807]

> And if I had to choose, I’d much rather have datacenters in orbit than one burning hydrocarbons loudly 2 blocks from my kids’ school.

Yeah, but that choice is nonsense. Mandate that datacenters on the ground are on 100% green power and quiet, and they'll still be way way more cost effective than the orbital option.

[piloto_ciego]

You don’t get it. Sorry, this is an “is-ought” thing. Sure we could mandate this. But are we going to? Do the systems exist that would actually mandate this?

Looking at things right now? I would say no. We will see, maybe in up my own ass on this, but I see a pretty big set of changes coming down the pike. Adapt or die (as unpalatable as that may seem).

[Dylan16807]

If you don't mandate anything, then they're going to build the dirty one.

So what kind of laws would lead to the orbital option being preferred over the ground-based clean option?

[piloto_ciego]

Well, arguably from the get go an orbital datacenter would be better. If launch costs were low enough I would say that as much industry as possible should be moved off planet, and we should make earth into a garden?

[Dylan16807]

We're still doing all the mining and manufacturing on Earth, and there's so much empty land. The final product of self-powered datacenter is among the lowest priority of things to get away from us, and not an effective place to spend environmental mitigation money. And then when they re-enter they pollute pretty badly.

[piloto_ciego]

Ok, this is not a reasoned argument anymore is it?

[Dylan16807]

What do you think isn't reasoned?

You came up with an extremely arbitrary choice. I pointed out that if you were in a position to make that choice, you have much better options somewhere in between.

Then you talked about the more general idea of moving all industry off the planet, and sure that's nice but this is not the industry you want to start with, it should be one of the last ones you worry about.

If someone's offering to build space datacenters for free, probably go ahead and take them up on the offer. But if you have any influence on the decisionmaking, don't push for space datacenters, just push for non-polluting datacenters. You'll get better results for cheaper.