What happens to all the precious metals that go up with these data centers? At least with a land based data center we have a vague hope of recycling the raw materials at some point in the future.
Just like with all the satellites, the recycling plan is to allow them to burn in atmosphere. Maybe after we breathe enough of it, we can recover the metals via crematories.
Precious metals stop being precious metals once asteroid mining begins. I don't think it will be super soon but I could certainly foresee it being a thing within 10 - 15 years which is about 2 - 3 generations of satellites from my very brief Google.
We are decades away from asteroid mining at best, even assuming we go all in starting today. The difficulties and numerous engineering challenges of mining at zero g cannot be understated.