Much of the pushback against the Stratos data center campus planned for Box Elder County has pointed to potential environmental impacts the project could have on such a rural, arid area near the Great Salt Lake.

But proponents argue such data centers are necessary to satisfy the U.S.’s ever-increasing desire for computing power.

Could the answer to this debate be in the sky? Experts discussed the possibilities at a recent panel hosted by the international law firm Greenberg Traurig.

Right now, companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are eyeing space as the next frontier, where they can host tens of thousands of satellites to form an orbital computing constellation hundreds of miles from Earth.

The goal, according to Blue Origin legal director Austin Murnane: support A.I. technology “in a way that reduces the burden on the environment here on Earth’s surface.”

The company plans to launch more than 50,000 satellites into orbit around Earth to form its orbital data center, powered by solar, as part of its “Project Sunrise,” according to paperwork filed with the Federal Communications Commission.

Three other companies — Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as well as California-based Cowboy Space Corp. and Washington-based Starcloud — have filed applications with the FCC for authorization to host orbital data centers, too, said Kathryne Dickerson, a telecommunications attorney at Greenberg Traurig.

Experts have also raised questions, though, about the impacts of hosting more and more satellites in Earth’s orbit, including officials with the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2022.

Such constellations could result in more orbital debris that could fall back down to Earth. Repeated rocket launches and satellite reentries could also cause an increase in harmful emissions that could change the air and cause impacts humans don’t yet understand, according to Yale’s online environmental magazine.

The satellites could also disrupt the view of the night sky. (NASA has filed an objection to Blue Origin’s plan, according to a letter it submitted to the FCC.)

Someday, however, proponents argue, these orbital centers may replace some terrestrial data centers that use large amounts of land and energy to function.

Could that mean that large data centers on Earth, like the one planned for Box Elder County, could one day become obsolete because of those in orbit?

“It’s the trillion-dollar question,” Murnane said.

It may be possible — far in the future.

“One of the things that we as a company strive to do someday, a long time in the future, is to create a solar system where a lot of the resource-intensive, a lot of the very extractive industries on Earth are moved to space,” Murnane said, “so that this very rare planet of ours, which is so well-suited for human life and other forms of life, can be free from some of the most extractive and destructive industries.”

“That’s not something that I’ve got on my calendar, though,” he continued.

Rick Ward, chief technology officer of OrbitsEdge, an early-stage space exploration company with plans for orbital data centers, did give some sense of time. He said in 50 years, “the majority of humanity’s compute will be done in space.”

That doesn’t mean data centers on Earth won’t exist though. Just perhaps fewer.

There are also companies looking to use orbital infrastructure, Dickerson said, to harness solar power and beam it down at terrestrial centers “to give them sort of around-the-clock power, while relieving some of the strain on the electrical grid.”

“It’s interesting because it’s an ever-evolving question,” she said, “and the answer shifts seemingly every day.”

In the nearer future, however, these space data centers are meant to complement terrestrial centers, Murnane said.

Any orbital data centers are at least years away from fruition. Right now, there is a lack of “reliable and large enough launch providers,” Dickerson said.

For the quantity of data centers wanted, there’s also a lack of in-orbit logistics and servicing options to fix or replace parts.

“What we’re seeing now is just a proliferation of weird space stuff,” she said — like companies developing refuelers and the space equivalent to tug boats, to “solve some of these on-orbit problems.”

“One of the fascinating things about space,” Dickerson said, “is if you build it, they will come.”