It has recently been suggested, often with some seriousness, that the future of data centres may not lie in Scandinavia, the desert, or the Irish countryside, but quietly orbiting the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour. Solar powered. Naturally cooled. Immune to planning objections. A triumph of human ingenuity, provided one is prepared to overlook the small matter of gravity.
The idea is not entirely fanciful. As demand for compute accelerates and terrestrial constraints multiply, power, land, water, and community tolerance, the heavens begin to resemble a growth market. Space offers excellent cooling, abundant sunlight, and no immediate neighbours drawing on the same grid at peak demand. And, in property terms, there are no planning constraints.
But as someone who spends an unhealthy amount of time thinking about Workforce Compliance, I find myself less captivated by orbital mechanics and more preoccupied by paperwork.
Who, precisely, would be the enforcing authority on a construction site in low Earth orbit? Which jurisdiction applies when a subcontractor drifts past their induction without a helmet? Does chain liability extend beyond the Kármán line? These are not absurd questions. They’re merely premature.
A space-based data centre would still require people. Engineers. Assemblers. Inspectors. Someone to tighten the final bolt, and someone else to confirm that they were authorised to do so. They will come from somewhere, be employed by someone, and operate under conditions that regulators, wherever they sit, will eventually wish to examine. Zero gravity does not eliminate employment law.
If anything, the compliance challenge becomes sharper. Fatigue behaves differently when “down” is a matter of perspective. Safety procedures drafted for terrestrial risk may struggle to account for orbital velocity. The comforting belief that compliance can be tidied up later, once the rocket has launched, feels less persuasive when “later” involves re-entry.
There is also the question of reputation. A serious incident on a remote site in northern Norway may be damaging, but it is contained. A comparable failure in orbit would be visible, immediate, and global. As projects become more remote, more complex, and more publicly exposed, independent owner-side oversight does not diminish in importance. It becomes structural.
None of this is an argument against ambition. Humanity has always built bold things in improbable places. But even in space, perhaps especially in space, someone will still need to ask the unglamorous questions early, record the answers carefully, and confirm that everyone on site, tethered or otherwise, has the legal right to be there.
The future may well be among the stars.
Compliance, reassuringly, will follow.
Author Profile:
Dieter Loraine is a Partner at CEG specialising in Workforce Compliance for complex, multi-jurisdictional data centre builds. He advises clients on chain liability, regulatory engagement, and how to keep projects moving without attracting the wrong kind of attention from authorities.
He has worked across some of Europe’s most tightly regulated labour markets and continues to operate on the assumption that even in orbit, someone will still ask for the paperwork.
