[echoangle]

They are mostly planning sun synchronous orbits afaik. That means the orbit is tilted so the earth’s deformed shape continually moves the orbital plane so the satellite is always in the sun (or generally the plane has the same angle to the sun).

[XorNot]

Sure: which is a higher and less accessible orbit. The relative fuel cost might be small, but in absolute terms the ship carrying payload is carrying a lot more to do it - see the number of Starships to refuel a Starship in LEO.

And here's the thing: all of this is competing with solar+batteries cost on Earth. The power situation is the only advantage here.

Like why not put a datacenter on a barge and run an HVDC line out to it far offshore? That would be expensive...but more expensive then space? It's not even outside of the capability set of SpaceX, who already run drone ships to facilitate Falcon 9 landings.

[echoangle]

> Sure: which is a higher and less accessible orbit. The relative fuel cost might be small, but in absolute terms the ship carrying payload is carrying a lot more to do it - see the number of Starships to refuel a Starship in LEO.

No it’s not, it’s not either SSO or LEO. You can have SSO at 600km which is lower than the normal LEO satellite.

I agree that it doesn’t make a lot of sense (look at the root comment of this thread), but you absolutely can make a LEO datacenter with 100% sun coverage if you want to.