What do you think of China, also dumb, or just blindly FOMO?
https://spacenews.com/china-backs-orbital-data-center-startu...
https://www.reuters.com/science/china-vows-develop-space-tou...
Plans for space data centers should be seen with skepticism. However when they are backed by different parties who have stakes in the game, that's more credible. More than HN crowd for sure.
OK, here's my problems with space data centers. How many of them has China solved?
1. Space is terrible for heat regulation. It's a perfect insulator for everything except radiative cooling, which is the least efficient. Hot things stay hot.
2. Space is full of radiation. Everything has to be radiation hardened, which makes it heavier, more expensive, and, yes, more difficult to cool.
3. Space is far away. Well, farther than a data center on Earth can be. I know China hasn't solved the speed of light.
We put up with it with satellites because it still has some advantages over trying to run cables literally everywhere, but we do, in fact, still use cables laid on the bottoms of the oceans.
So, is physics wrong, or is a country known for making dumb decisions some times making a dumb decision?
I would comfortably bet at least $1000 that this is bs, and it would be more money than China has put in so far. They've got a "vow."
To answer your first question, yes. Even if they were US companies. Remember when each Big Tech player was claiming to build their own blockchain, except centralized which was a contradiction.