For this to be viable economically you would need:
- Maturity in server tech such that the components you spend millions sending into Space aren't rendered obsolete by newer tech 5-10 years down the line. That'll happen but it's no sign of happening tomorrow.
- Space launches and operations to become cheaper and more commodified. This is happening thanks to Elon Musk and his competitors. But it's an infinite road.
- Costs of doing it on Earth sufficiently high due to energy needs making it competitive to do this for the orders of magnitude less processing power you can have in Space due to thermal dissipation limits, that it actually costs less.
Honestly, the only case I can see for this is a security one. But if you're able to do this then you're able to secure your physical location on Earth from anybody except nation states. And if your adversary is a nation state, then they can come after you on the ground and force you to give up your data that way. Plus the big players (US, etc.) wouldn't you launch if there was a chance you going to do things contrary to their interests anyway.
Unless we're talking small scale and more focused on storage than compute on top of that, I don't see why this would be worth it. Low bandwidth, (very) hard to cool, difficult to upgrade, expensive to place, stratospheric
(thank you) insurance and liability costs. Unless we start building large scale operations and communities in Space that need its location, I don't see how this becomes worthwhile. I mean it would be great to have the tech and when we need a scattered cloud of these things to provide intermediary relays between our Mars and Europa colonies, it'll be useful.
But till then I need more convincing.
you can't "vent waste heat outside" in the vacuum of space where there is no atmosphere.
Well, you can... You just lose mass every time you do it. Sooner or later (probably sooner) you run out of super-hot gas to pump out into Space.
