Permitting in space seems easy now, but once datacenters in space become a big business, regulators will be tempted to extract more rents.
As you note in the report, satellites are vulnerable to missiles. And you note they can be hacked through ground stations; once hacked, they’ll be difficult to recover without physical access. Also, space pirates!
So some of the current permitting and security advantages of space may evaporate, which makes terrestrial options comparatively more appealing: Federal land in the US, countries with easier permitting, uninhabited wastes, Antarctica, and the entire ocean. These have their own engineering and security issues, but maybe easier than in space?
So my tentative conclusion is that if launch costs don’t decrease enough, and permitting and security end up being a big problem in space, there’s an opportunity for a “SpaceX of the sea” or “SpaceX of Antarctica” to build terrestrial datacenters. But by Niplav’s Law of One Player, it won’t happen unless you do it.
SpaceX is under a legal regime where it’s forbidden to export rocket technology without permission. I would expect that the US government would not want give the permission to escape it’s cone of influence.
Permitting in space seems easy now, but once datacenters in space become a big business, regulators will be tempted to extract more rents.
As you note in the report, satellites are vulnerable to missiles. And you note they can be hacked through ground stations; once hacked, they’ll be difficult to recover without physical access. Also, space pirates!
So some of the current permitting and security advantages of space may evaporate, which makes terrestrial options comparatively more appealing: Federal land in the US, countries with easier permitting, uninhabited wastes, Antarctica, and the entire ocean. These have their own engineering and security issues, but maybe easier than in space?
So my tentative conclusion is that if launch costs don’t decrease enough, and permitting and security end up being a big problem in space, there’s an opportunity for a “SpaceX of the sea” or “SpaceX of Antarctica” to build terrestrial datacenters. But by Niplav’s Law of One Player, it won’t happen unless you do it.
(Niplav’s law of one player’s footnote would consider a SpaceX of the sea/Antartica to be an exception)
Sure enough, Atomarine aspires to be a SpaceX of the sea.
SpaceX is under a legal regime where it’s forbidden to export rocket technology without permission. I would expect that the US government would not want give the permission to escape it’s cone of influence.