> You can't get enough power or distribute the heat
At the very least, one can turn off the data center components, wait till it cools down, then start it again. Nobody says all of it has to run continuously.
> you have no way to economically service the inevitable failures
The data center's components can communicate with each other by radio, meaning failed components can be simply replaced.
The primary cost benefit of orbital data centers is the availability of efficient, around-the-clock solar power. Any time spent idling for heat reasons directly eats into the profitability of the concept so there's no reason* to design a system that isn't optimized to operate in a steady state. You would instead just put fewer GPUs on it or increase the size of your panels and radiators. The only question is whether or not that steady state is cost effective.
*There are reasons, but none that justify very large scale compute clusters in space
At the very least, one can turn off the data center components, wait till it cools down, then start it again. Nobody says all of it has to run continuously.
> you have no way to economically service the inevitable failures
The data center's components can communicate with each other by radio, meaning failed components can be simply replaced.
*There are reasons, but none that justify very large scale compute clusters in space