Afraid of floods and hackers? Put your data in space

Satellite-based data centers with room for petabytes of data may start orbiting Earth as early as 2019. But when it comes to keeping secrets safe from the long arm of the law, the black void may not be far enough.

Cloud Constellation, a startup in Los Angeles, is looking upward to give companies and governments direct access to their data from anywhere in the world. Its data centers on satellites would let users bypass the Internet and the thousands of miles of fiber that their bits now have to traverse in order to circle the globe. And instead of just transporting data, the company’s satellites would store it, too.

The pitch goes like this: Data centers and cables on Earth are susceptible to hacking and to national regulations covering things like government access to information. They can also slow data down as it goes through switches and from one carrier to another, and all those carriers need to get paid.

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