[xorcist]

> Are there any reasonable analyses of the practicality of data centers in space?

The purpose of "datacenters -- in space!" isn't to actually lift server racks into orbit, one piece at a time.

It serves the same purpose as every Tesla serving extra as autonomous taxis, as people travelling by hyperloop instead of a functional train service, and as humanoid robots doing your dishes instead of the normal robots called dish washing machines.

None of these things are meant to be taken literally. Yet they all seems to have worked out just fine.

For these arguments to carry pathos they all need have a grain of truth to them. There will be local AI in satellites, for "special" applications. Think image processing for birds that have a very nice high resolution view of your back yard, and whose decisions must be low latency or when bandwith is an issue. The trick to the argument to to blur the issue by conflating it with the datacenter AI that anyone can use.