It makes sense if we have a space elevator

But that’s sort of where at least musk is thinking. Maybe he’s been drinking his own koolaid too much but starship promises a revolution in space launches, and bringing down the cost to space by an order of magnitude, on top of Falcon bringing down the cost to space by an order of magnitude

I’m sure there’s also a bit of circular logic: the best way to decrease launch costs enough to support datacenter in space is to have data centers in space driving greatly increased launches. If starship isn’t building a mars colony anytime soon then how will its use scale to match what it was designed for?

TBH I like that they’re doing this. Datacenters in space may be a silly idea, but there are and will be space use cases that need the next level of computing capabilities, think “datacenters”. Imagine the myriad of instruments we have in orbit being able to act more autonomously, preprocess a flood of data into a manageable stream of information. Let them pursue their folly if it means the next generation of telescopes will do much more