Google's data center energy director said this week that space data centers could cost up to 100 times that of terrestrial data centers. Google itself is testing AI server chips in orbit. This statement throws cold water on the hot concept of space computing power. Peterson Corio, head of Google's data center energy, also mentioned that currently American society's opposition to terrestrial data centers is gradually rising, and a large part of the responsibility lies with a group of new enterprises with limited qualifications. Such companies should be subject to higher regulatory standards. She said that before this wave of AI computing power boom, companies that had been deeply involved in data center construction “all had relatively standardized practices”, and related projects rarely caused controversy. The launch cost of putting computational hardware into orbit is “extremely high, up to 100 times the cost of ground construction,” Peterson Corio said. In addition to costs, operators also need to solve the problems of maintenance and upgrade of in-orbit equipment. On the ground, data center workers can change servers and rewire and debug the system at any time. Peterson Corio did not completely reject the idea of space computing power. She called this direction “very interesting”; the reason why Google continues to lay out such high-risk cutting-edge projects is because companies have a habit of “thinking ahead of time about what will happen 10, 20, or 30 years from now.” However, the implementation of this technology is “far from right around the corner.”

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