Sending to LEO costs around $2,700 usd and 9kWh of fuel per kilogram.

If you manage to send a data center with high end processing units, large array of solar panels, even larger liquid cooling and tick shielding against solar rays you’d have spent probably 100x to 1000x the cost of an equivalent earth data center even without considering hardware deprecation.

You’re better off sinking your data center deep in the sea and even that is probably not happening at large scales.

How do the laws of physics allow it? How do you disperse the heat? How do you protect your compute from cosmic rays? How do you get enough solar up there without catastrophic damage from micrometeorites?

I think the question here is: do the laws of economics allow it?

How much SpaceX stock did you buy? Are you buying this dip?

Space data centers are an intrinsically cool idea, and honestly I hope we see at least one for the sheer marvel of such a project. But to be cost efficient, it has to be cheaper than rural US, cheaper than buying some island, cheaper than setting it up on a converted freighter ship and tanking the fuel in, etc.

BUT once Earth has a fully paid off space elevator the unit economics will make sense, or if we have orbital space factories and don't have any lift costs, etc. It's all possible, but at a 50 year+ timescale and immense investment. All of which I hope for because I'd like to see more space development and exploration.

Space data centers require hundreds of daily launches. Disney and the massive industries around Canaveral will NIMBY it hard.