I am just honestly confused. There seem to be no logical reason for it, except that it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
I am just honestly confused. There seem to be no logical reason for it, except that it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
As stated elsewhere it’s a scam but their stated reason is because they want to build massive data centres on earth but there’s a huge backlog in getting electricity for them. Even generating their own electricity is troublesome because every single natural gas/methane turbine is already spoken for years into the future and solar etc takes a lot of land which they may have trouble getting the rights to build on. Thus, if you could build in space you can theoretically collect a lot more solar and more strongly than what you get on the planet’s surface. It just ignores all the other costly parts but I guess if you are being given unlimited money by venture capitalists what else are you going to promise them when they want more more more AI infrastructure
Solar on deserts, or even Nebraska farmland, is far more profitable than corn for ethanol and produces far more energy. Even with 2-5 hours of sunlight/day, battery systems, would be 5x cheaper in Nebraska than space for 24/7/365 power production, with perhaps minor throtling in winter. A datacenter in the middle of a solar farm also eliminates noise complaints from cooling systems.