Extra terra nullius: Off-worlding the externalities of AI, Bitcoin mining and cloud computing with Orbital Data Centres

Despite ambitious carbon neutrality targets from Big Tech companies like Google, the rapid global proliferation of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centres means the industry’s energy use could triple by 2030. Current projections suggest that business-as-usual development could result in data centres accounting for between 14 and 20 percent of the US’s total power demand. To escape the need to mitigate the climate and water footprints of sprawling facilities on Earth, there has been much discussion in both the computing and commercial space communities concerning the feasibility of developing data centres in space. Off-worlding the industry’s externalities by using Orbital Data Centres (ODC) is progressing from a science fiction concept to a series of active commercial research missions. This article questions the drivers, opportunities and challenges in developing these ODC projects. I also propose a need for further social science research in this rapidly evolving sector. While together, space technologies and data centres underpin much of the global economy, I argue that planned ODC developments appear to be driven more through circular financing opportunities and libertarian accelerationist ideologies, than sound environmental management. By failing to reconcile their externalities on Earth and avoiding regulation in space, ODC projects are likely to generate significant social and environmental challenges.