Companies have proposed launching fleets of satellites into orbit that would act similar to data centres on Earth. Credit: NicoElNino/Alamy As the huge data centres powering the artificial-intelligence boom grow ever more unpopular on Earth, companies are planning to launch them into space. Data centres will use twice as much energy by 2030 — driven by AI In the past few months, firms including SpaceX, Google and Blue Origin have all shared plans to launch large fleets, or constellations, of satellites into low Earth orbit. The networks would act in a similar way to the interconnected computers inside data centres on Earth, which process, store and transmit data on a massive scale. Putting these ‘orbital data centres’ into space could, in theory, address concerns about their energy and water consumption, and their occupation of wide swathes of land.…