LOOKING FOR RESEARCH PARTNERS: The Coming Infrastructure Bottleneck: Why Space-Based Data Centers Deserve Serious Analysis

Ai scaling isn’t slowing down. But the infrastructure required to sustain it is hitting real, physical limits and the gap between compute demand and terrestrial supply is widening. I’m currently researching what I’m calling “The Orbital Threshold” in which I identity the inflection point where rising terrestrial constraint costs intersects with falling space-based deployment costs, making orbital compute economically viable for specific workloads. This isn’t science fiction. Google’s Project Suncatcher has a 2027 launch timeline. Star cloud is developing orbital data center architecture. The conversation has moved from “If” to “how and when”. Key Questions I’m working through: At what point does the terrestrial infrastructure mismatch become a genuine bottleneck on AI advancement? Which workloads actually benefit from the space tradeoff? And is there a computable crossover point? I’m building cost-curve models and scenario analyses to answer these rigorously and objectively. If you work in data-center infrastructure, aerospace, energy policy, or AI compute planning I’d welcome the conversation!