zlacker

>>wiley1+(OP)
Microsoft had/has the Natick project which was an undersea data center testbed which allegedly had a bunch of benefits. That doesn't seem to have gone anywhere - or at least isn't really scaling up. I'd imagine the ongoing operational costs of space are worse than the ocean?

To me, the cost estimates seem a bit off and conflate capital with running costs.

The main benefit for space at the moment seems to be sidestepping terrestrial regulations.

>>entang+Bh
> Microsoft had/has the Natick project which was an undersea data center testbed which allegedly had a bunch of benefits. That doesn't seem to have gone anywhere - or at least isn't really scaling up.

I think at the core of this there's a risk analysis. At one point I briefly worked in a team in charge of a company's servers, and there were plenty of stories of things gone wrong enough that someone had to drive or fly to the datacenter. These company's datacenters were named after the closest airport for this reason, iirc. A little optimization in case things went very wrong; you always knew where you'd have to fly in to.

Even if an undersea data center could potentially yield cost benefits, it's also significantly riskier in case something goes wrong. How long would it take to physically access a machine? Do you have to bring down other machines to access it? And at scale, things tend to always go wrong.

To comment on the original post, needless to say this is even more complicated, costly and untimely in space.