“Cooling is the obstacle, not the launch cost. Vacuum is a worse heat dissipation environment than air, not a better one.”
Three different startups are pitching investors on data centers in orbit and the physics is the part nobody wants to discuss. Vacuum does not absorb heat. Solar panels do not deliver consistent power on a fixed orbit. Latency to ground is a multi-hop problem. The pitch survives because none of the investors have a physics degree. The problem will sort itself when the first one actually launches and immediately shuts down.