Hardware is no longer the problem holding back space-based data centers — the supply chain is

Orbital and lunar data centers are often framed as engineering challenges or launch economics problems. Those matter, but they are not the limiting factor. The real bottleneck is the absence of a procurement and logistics architecture capable of sourcing, qualifying, transporting, assembling and sustaining the technologies these systems require. If companies are going to realize their goals of building and operating space-based data centers, they must commit to building the procurement, logistics and qualification infrastructure that makes sustained deployments possible. Without that backbone, orbital compute remains a concept rather than an industry.