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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

"But why would you?"

Because the permitting process is much easier and there are way, way fewer authorities that can potentially shut you down.

I think this is the entire difference. Space is very, very lightly regulated, especially when it comes to labor, construction and environmental law. You need to be able to launch from somewhere and you need to automate a lot of things. But once you can do this, you escaped all but a few authorities that would hold power over you down on Earth.

No one will be able to complain that your data center is taking their water or making their electricity more expensive, for example.

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The satellite is built on Earth, so I’m not sure how it dodges any of those regulations practically. Why not just build a fully autonomous, solar powered datacenter on Earth? I guess in space Elon might think that no one can ban Grok for distributing CSAM?

There’s some truly magical thinking behind the idea that government regulations have somehow made it cheaper to launch a rocket than build a building. Rockets are fantastically expensive even with the major leaps SpaceX made and will be even with Starship. Everything about a space launch is expensive, dangerous, and highly regulated. Your datacenter on Earth can’t go boom.

"fantastically expensive"

From individual POV yes, but already Falcons are not that expensive. In the sense that it is feasible for a relatively unimportant entity to buy their launch services.

"The satellite is built on Earth, so I’m not sure how it dodges any of those regulations practically."

It is easier to shop for jurisdiction when it comes to manufacturing, especially if your design is simple enough - which it has to be in order to run unattended for years. If you outsource the manufacturing to N chosen factories in different locations, you can always respond to local pressure by moving out of that particular country. In effect, you just rent time and services of a factory that can produce tons of other products.

A data center is much more expensive to build and move around. Once you build it in some location, you are committed quite seriously to staying there.

Truly magical thinking, you say? OK, let's rewind the clock to 2008. In that year two things happened:

- SpaceX launched its first rocket successfully.

- California voted to build high speed rail.

Eighteen years later:

- SpaceX has taken over the space industry with reusable rockets and a global satcom network, which by itself contains more than half of all satellites in orbit.

- Californian HSR has spent over thirteen billion dollars and laid zero miles of track. That's more than 2x the cost of the Starship programme so far.

Building stuff on Earth can be difficult. People live there, they have opinions and power. Their governments can be dysfunctional. Trains are 19th century technology, it should be easier to build a railway than a global satellite network. It may seem truly magical but putting things into orbit can, apparently, be easier.

it should be easier to build a railway

No, because of the costs of acquiring land that the railway goes through.

Now how about procuring half a gigawatt when nearby residents are annoyed about their heating bills doubling, and are highly motivated to block you? This is already happening in some areas.

That’s a strange comparison to make. Those are entirely different sectors and sorts of engineering projects. In this example, also, SpaceX built all of that on Earth.

Why not do the obvious comparison with terrestrial data centers?

So it's a Zone in search of a use case?

Libertarian Paradise!

Too bad the fire trucks can't get to you when you catch on fire from that hot GPU.

Good thing the lack of oxygen does a pretty good job of taking care of that for you ;-)

And publicly maintained roads.

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