2 ms·
> If it was doing stuff with satellites, I'm actually more interested in how it got inventory to do so over a two year time span. Did it drop to lower altitudes
by roywiggins 7y ago
> If it was doing stuff with satellites, I'm actually more interested in how it got inventory to do so over a two year time span. Did it drop to lower altitudes to refuel and get more satellites to deploy/replace/upgrade?
1) CubeSats can be very tiny, and perhaps it was only releasing babysats for part of the mission, or at long intervals
2) surely we'd have noticed if there was a space fuel depot,
2b) if there was, why would it need to find it at a lower altitude?
- kbenson 7y ago> 2) surely we'd have noticed if there was a space fuel depot > 2b) if there was, why would it need to find it at a lower altitude? Well, it's a space plane, so I was thinking of a more exotic variation of conventional air refueling, but upon further thought that seems very unlikely as if it was that easy to get from land to the refueling point and from the refueling point to space, we'd see that as the usual way to get to orbit instead of rockets (or rocket attached ships). I don't spend a lot of time thinking about rocketry and orbit unless in a discussion about it, so this wasn't immediately obvious to me initially. That said, it's possible that some satellites actually contained extra fuel for future use when deployed, either in them or as a separate attached payload. In that case, there wouldn't be one large space fuel depot, but possibly many small ones.