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Current mix of electric generation is not going to get 37 times cleaner in 10 years. That's the ratio we're talking about right now. But I do agree that the ec

Current mix of electric generation is not going to get 37 times cleaner in 10 years. That's the ratio we're talking about right now. But I do agree that the economic math is not a slam dunk. A lot of things have to go perfectly right for it to make sense economically. But that's the irony: Orbital datacenters are much cleaner than terrestrial ones, and if we don't deploy them, it will only be because corporations care more about profit than the environment. You would think environmentalists would be the ones pushing for orbital datacenters.

ben_w 6mo ago
> Current mix of electric generation is not going to get 37 times cleaner in 10 years. That's the ratio we're talking about right now. Doesn't need to: because data centres are already power-constrained, the correct question is marginal new supply in each case. If you build 25 GW of new data centres (which seems to be roughly the scale being proposed here), the options are (1) build more power plants or (2) have brownouts and/or rolling blackouts. What are those new power plants going to be? Even though Trump hates renewables, they're now the cheapest new power source, which was already necessary to be even considering putting 25 GW of PV onto satellites in the first place. This makes it a question of what's cheaper: over-provisioning and storage, or launch costs?