The satellite way: we launch a hundred million big satellites (or fewer even bigger satellites).
The land way: we cover 15000 square kilometers of the sahara desert in solar panels, or half-cover 30000, either way that's less than a percent of it. And some of the corners of the solar fields get turned into actual datacenter.
They both sound very hard but I don't see any notable reason to favor the first one.
The number of solar panels I quoted is enough to average more than a terawatt across 24 hours. For the usage part of the equation, you need to overbuild your compute and/or have batteries. Those options are expensive but in exchange you don't need to space-proof or space-launch anything.
The satellite way: we launch a hundred million big satellites (or fewer even bigger satellites).
The land way: we cover 15000 square kilometers of the sahara desert in solar panels, or half-cover 30000, either way that's less than a percent of it. And some of the corners of the solar fields get turned into actual datacenter.
They both sound very hard but I don't see any notable reason to favor the first one.