May 27, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- China is abandoning upper stages in earth orbit at an increasing rate
So, after dumping toxic first stages on their own people’s head, China then fails to properly de-orbit the upper stages (like everyone else), leaving them as junk that others now have to deal with.
- Satellite startup Starcloud teams up with SpaceX to integrate 50 Starlink terminals on 25 of its satellites
The company, which has filed for an FCC license for an 88,000 constellation, expects to begin launching these satellites within a year.
- Rocket Lab finalizes its purchase of robotic firm Motiv Space Systems
Now called Rocket Lab Robotics, this division gives the company robotic technology already used on many planetary missions.
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I have this fantasy where the response to China’s behavior goes something like “We observe that you just launched a Long March 5, which has no demonstrated upper stage safety process. We consider this a good opportunity to test the boost phase interception capability of Golden Dome.”
Indeed, the key reason Starship has not gone to orbit yet is because Spacex needs near certainty that they won’t have an uncontrolled reentry.
or, “we found some nice abandoned aluminum (and other stuff) in orbit. I think we will recycle this in our LEO factory.”
Is the propellent more expensive than the delivered materials ? How much more propellent is needed to move it to a more useful orbit/place (factory)?
Moving something in one orbit to a “more useful” orbit can either not be much effort at all, or take more energy than sending it to Mars, depending on just how different the orbits are. There are several factors to consider:
How circular is the orbit? Making an orbit more or less circular is relatively straightforward and inexpensive.
Next: What is the mean altitude of the orbit? Change is the same mechanism, but potentially twice as expensive, as you first raise/lower one end of the orbit, then bring the other side up/down to match.
Plane changes are where it starts to get expensive. If I’m trying to move an upper stage that was used to launch something from Baikonur into a Molniya orbit, and I want to change that to the planetary plane, for example.. that’s about the same cost as a lunar transfer, if not more.
And finally you have to consider the LAN. If I launch something from, say, the Cape, on the inclination of the ISS, at 8am, and then I launch again, at the same inclination, 4 hours later, those two stages are in the “same” inclination in theory, but only in the same way that, for example, Interstate 10 and Interstate 90 are both going east-west. To move from one to the other, you have to make a plane change, coast over to the other LAN, and then make another plane change again. And then you have to consider phasing, if the depot is in the exact same orbit you are, but you’re over the Cape as it’s passing over New Zealand, now you need to deal with that…
Picking up spent Long March bodies from the various constellation launches, and gathering them to a single depot at say 28.5 degrees inclination and a nice medium altitude of 1,500km, you’d be dealing with all of those factors. And the combined dV is going to end up averaging in the 5km/sec range, if not more. So it’s basically not even remotely realistic. It’s vastly easier to either pull them down into the atmosphere, or boost them up to Earth escape.
We don’t hear about communists anymore because they’ve changed their strategy to bringing about their utopia through leftist movements like environmentalism and racism.
The funny thing is the more Marxist a country is the more racist and environmentally filthy it is. They don’t care about the environment or equality. They care about power.
I can’t believe china would do this.
Said no one ever.
They are the polar opposite of Europe…which has no real hunger for spaceflight