Armstrong: Orbital data centers bypass terrestrial regulation

While orbital compute promises to bypass Earth-bound bureaucracy and capitalize on solar power, the thermal management challenges of passive radiative cooling in a vacuum, orbital debris risks, and high launch costs make it a highly speculative alternative to building terrestrial infrastructure.

• –**Regulatory Arbitrage:** The primary near-term driver for orbital compute may be avoiding zoning laws, environmental permits, and power grid constraints rather than actual engineering efficiency.
• –**Thermal Bottlenecks:** Dissipating heat in a vacuum relies entirely on radiation, which is far less efficient than terrestrial convective and conductive cooling methods.
• –**Debris and Maintenance:** High-velocity space junk posing collision risks and the impossibility of physical maintenance or hardware upgrades present severe long-term reliability concerns.