Orbital datacenters are a pie-in-the-sky idea: Gartner

Gartner analyst Bill Ray argues that orbital datacenters are not economically viable for terrestrial compute needs, citing prohibitive launch costs, extreme temperature swings, and maintenance challenges. While the technology might eventually support in-space data processing, Ray advises companies to focus on Earth-based solutions like underwater datacenters or Arctic facilities to avoid underbuilding capacity due to “space datacenter hype.”