No, data centers in space aren't Science Fiction. That doesn’t mean it’s that useful to you, either

You may have noticed a flurry of articles in the last few weeks which all ran variations of the following headline: ‘Data centers in space are no longer science fiction.’

Short answer, no, they’re not—but that also doesn’t mean you should be looking to wind down your Northern Virginia or Docklands data center lease quite yet.

The context: last year, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted orbital facilities could be built at scale within 10 years, but “for sure” in under 20, and at least one source says his company is actively pursuing the plan.

Not to be outdone in the cool stakes, SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk has claimed that satellites with localized AI compute, where just the results are beamed back from low-latency, sun-synchronous orbit, “will be the lowest cost way to generate AI bitstreams in <3 years” - amplifying his idea at last month’s Davos ...