Astro Hawk (Ian Kluft) ✅🚀🛰️"With Starfall, SpaceX eyes an edge in global cargo delivery from orbit" by @arstechnica / Stephen Clark - #SpaceX #Falcon9 launch today had a surprise experimental payload called "Starfall", announced just before launch to be a re-entry pod for #cargo delivery on suborbital flight or re-entry from orbit, landing by parachute wherever a probably-military cargo needs to go. Most details so far are from a public environmental statement for FAA. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/06/with-starfall-spacex-eyes-an-edge-in-global-cargo-delivery-from-orbit/ #NewSpace #space #business
Prof. Sam Lawler@AstroHawk @arstechnica I've already seen SpaceX's cargo delivery service from orbit. It sucks!
RalfMaximus@sundogplanets @AstroHawk @arstechnica
Snort.
But yeah, part of SpaceX's allure to the military, the way he sold it, is "instant orbital delivery to anywhere on earth" and he's not referring to Doordashing delicious snacks.
CyAllure to the stupid military maybe. "This amazing device can deliver weapons to shoot your enemies with over like 10 times the distance of just trucks delivering it, for extremely light payloads hope you don't like bullets. gibbe mone plox"
The last space thing that helped the military was GPS.
The last space thing that helped the military was GPS.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)There’s also the the reason countries abandoned space-based weaponry:
The satellites are in predictable locations. Anything deployed from them follows a predictable path for a long time.
This is basically the ideal case for interceptors. About the only thing that makes sense as a space-deployed weapon is a kinetic lance (basically, a big blob of aerodynamic metal that hits the ground with enormous force) because it’s hard to intercept. But it doesn’t make much sense because it’s very expensive to launch and it’s sitting there where someone can destroy its thrusters at the start of a conflict.
In any war where this might be useful, the first strike will destroy the deployment platforms.
@sundogplanets @arstechnica Yup. You wrote about it to help inform the news media and the public on the issue of space debris falling uncontrolled from orbit. Let's bring one of your articles into this thread. https://theconversation.com/spacex-space-junk-crashed-onto-saskatchewan-farmland-highlighting-a-potential-impending-disaster-233322
SpaceX space junk crashed onto Saskatchewan farmland, highlighting a potential impending disaster
As the number of satellites and rocket launches increases, so does the amount of discarded rockets and components. This space junk risks falling to Earth, as it did in Saskatchewan this spring.
@sundogplanets Fortunately that led to public pressure over debris found in multiple countries and pressured SpaceX to move crew & cargo Dragon splashdowns from Florida to California in 2025. And they release the trunk from Dragon after de-orbit burn, putting it on a controlled re-entry path aimed at the Pacific. Much better plan. (article from @arstechnica ) https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/spacex-moving-dragon-splashdowns-to-pacific-to-solve-falling-debris-problem/
@AstroHawk @arstechnica Thanks for bringing this in!
Definitely better, from a ground casualty risk perspective, but of course still leaves the issue of disposal unsolved: whatever doesn't ablate and get deposited in the atmosphere on their "fully demisable" cargo trunk now gets dumped into the ocean. And of course SpaceX won't tell anyone what materials they are using, so who knows what the environmental effects are. Hopefully minimally bad.
@sundogplanets @arstechnica Is there a more economical solution than building a heat shield for every Low Earth Orbit object? That's a lot of extra mass that companies and militaries can't be convinced to comply with.
@AstroHawk @arstechnica My answer to questions like this does not make me popular with satellite operators: there's a hard limit to how many satellites can launch and reenter every year without severe environmental consequences, and we're already well above that. Satellites are *incredibly* useful, and we are currently not doing a good job of using them wisely
@sundogplanets @arstechnica So it sounds like the answer is a combination of rate limiting or heat shields.
europlus 
@AstroHawk @arstechnica @sundogplanets oh my dog, it even sounds like a Bond villain’s evil scheme’s name.
llewelly@AstroHawk @arstechnica
wait a minute. Wasn't Starfall the name of an ancient legendary disaster that created the Sea of Fallen Stars in the Faerun (Forgotten Realms) D&D universe back in the 1980s?
wait a minute. Wasn't Starfall the name of an ancient legendary disaster that created the Sea of Fallen Stars in the Faerun (Forgotten Realms) D&D universe back in the 1980s?
@llewelly Not familar. Sounds like a spoof of the James Bond film Skyfall and/or the Doctor Who 2-part episode Spyfall.
Hanno Rein@AstroHawk @arstechnica a cargo delivery for the military is also called a bomb
@hannorein Not necessarily. Bombs don't need parachutes to slow down for landing like cargo does. So that much makes the announcement plausible in the little amount they've said. ICBM capability has already existed for almost 70 years, and long-range self-guided cruise missiles for 45 years. And bombs don’t need reusable platforms.
Oliver SchafeldAnything not to let that "point-to-point" passenger/cargo rocket idea die? 😏
