Heh, it’s just funny to me that you would call the idea of orbital datacenters nonsensical compared to lunar datacenters. I mean, like I laid out earlier, orbital datacenters may well be a bad idea, but at the moment (in 2026) lunar datacenters are technically and logistically impossible and economically ludicrous. The launch costs alone make the project a non-starter.
And all for what? What are the advantages of putting this hardware on the moon? Possibly using lunar regolith as a heat sink? We don’t need heat sinks, radiators work fine. Possibly avoiding ionizing radiation by building underground? That’s just so much more work… Shipping in excavating equipment… Just no.
And there really isn’t all that much ionizing radiation in low earth orbit, you still have the earth’s magnetic field protecting you and the earth itself blocking all particles from one side. You get exposed to a little bit more than you do on the surface because you don’t have the atmosphere’s protection as well. But if nothing else, the existence of telacom satellite constellations proves that we’ve figured out how to overcome those obstacles, and many of those satellites aren’t even in LEO some are all the way out in geostationary orbit without any of those protections, and they’re still working fine. The ionizing radiation just isn’t a big deal.
Again, I’m not saying orbital datacenters are a good idea, but I am saying it’s doable today, right now, at a relatively affordable price. If to be realistic a lunar datacenter requires the kind of moon colony that won’t exist for another 50-100 years at the very soonest, that seems like a worse plan.
Heh, it’s just funny to me that you would call the idea of orbital datacenters nonsensical compared to lunar datacenters. I mean, like I laid out earlier, orbital datacenters may well be a bad idea, but at the moment (in 2026) lunar datacenters are technically and logistically impossible and economically ludicrous. The launch costs alone make the project a non-starter.
And all for what? What are the advantages of putting this hardware on the moon? Possibly using lunar regolith as a heat sink? We don’t need heat sinks, radiators work fine. Possibly avoiding ionizing radiation by building underground? That’s just so much more work… Shipping in excavating equipment… Just no.
And there really isn’t all that much ionizing radiation in low earth orbit, you still have the earth’s magnetic field protecting you and the earth itself blocking all particles from one side. You get exposed to a little bit more than you do on the surface because you don’t have the atmosphere’s protection as well. But if nothing else, the existence of telacom satellite constellations proves that we’ve figured out how to overcome those obstacles, and many of those satellites aren’t even in LEO some are all the way out in geostationary orbit without any of those protections, and they’re still working fine. The ionizing radiation just isn’t a big deal.
Again, I’m not saying orbital datacenters are a good idea, but I am saying it’s doable today, right now, at a relatively affordable price. If to be realistic a lunar datacenter requires the kind of moon colony that won’t exist for another 50-100 years at the very soonest, that seems like a worse plan.