propaganda. "TASS has revealed that the Soviets have launched an ant into orbit around Planet X …
yadda yadda." I'm still mad at the commies for letting Laika die.
Posted on 07/15/2025 9:12:13 AM PDT by Red Badger
PING!......................
Yeah, but do the Muslim residents of China feel valued by their space agency? That’s what’s important.
The article misses the most important point.
The lifetime of satellites, particularly recon satellites, is determined NOT buy solar panel degradation or even gamma particle impacts on memory.
Rather, it is fuel for the attitude thrusters. They correct for gravity (lunar) perturbations and solar wind perturbations. This is what keeps the cameras precisely pointed.
If you can refuel the thrusters in space, that is one hell of a lot of launch requirement for replacements that reduces.
This is actually just as important to future combat as aerial refueling is to modern air combat. A surveillance satellite that can be autonomously refueled can be retasked and moved far more frequently, without having an hard per-unit limit on how many moves it can make.
A *combat* satellite could be reloaded and resupplied by almost the same method.
How long has NASA been in existence, since the late 1950s? Just goes to show NASA isn’t about space anymore.
I’ll worry when the Chinese figure out how to give out Green Stamps when refueling….. 😂😂😂😂
Future combat in space. And present combat in space too - since one of two satellites was designed and built and then launched 5 years ago.
But.
A stable, close robot-controlled remote rendezvous is necessary for refueling rendezvous and hookup, but is not necessarily a successful refueling. Yet.
It is hard to believe NASA does not have this capability already.
Any experts here that can confirm one way or the other?
Well, NASA has been real good at not getting much done lately.
NASA *might* not trumpet such a capability. But the USAF, which has it’s own separate space program, would definitely classify any such re-fueling missions. Look at how long the X-37B has been flying long-duration missions? The USAF still has not clarified what that unmanned spacecraft does.
OMG loved doing those books and going to that funny store
Yes it does, but its not what you wrote.
Being able to conduct RPO (rendezvous and prox ops) and docking is a required skill if you want to go up and do mischievous activities to other nations assets.
Most satellites have design life between 5 and 15 years and the fuel to do that, for the most part, is not a large mass issue. This is certainly the case in GEO. And most satellites would be obsolete 15 years after launch, which means 18-20 years after design and hardware build. The refueling case is largely an outlier.
Ban red China from American universities
I was just thinking about the x-37b. I haven’t heard anything about it for quite a while.
The Boeing X-37 only does propaganda and never is used for anything useful - or so China would like everyone to believe. No one in the USAF would even dream of refueling US spy satellites!
Refueling satellites is a far cry from refueling an orbiting rocket.
I wonder what that little space shuttle thing we have has been doing in orbit. I would not be shocked to hear it was a little satellite gas station.
NASA is not tasked with such operations - it would be a DIA, DOD etc task.
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