Posted by gmays 3 days ago
If you manufacture there how do you recover it?
So you tell them where to deliver it (anywhere on the planet that its orbit goes over..), they tell you when it will be arriving, and it reenters and lands there.
Article about a recent test (launched on a Falcon 9):
https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4629122...
The graphic shows it reentering the atmosphere.
The uppermost parts of the atmosphere are very dynamic, with changes in solar activity causing them to contract and expand on a scale of hours. And this is very significant for the amount of drag felt by re-entering objects. Because of this, if you slowly deorbit something naturally through drag, you are not going to be able to pick the destination, or even know where it ends up until very close to it falling down. So instead you intentionally lower the perigee so that it deorbits in a controlled manner.
Thanks for the correction!
Will this mean that only governments and the military can afford to purchase next generation semiconductors which need ultra-pure silicon?
Looks cool and if they could make chips in space, it will be beyond crazy. It will be over time and way over budget but in the end will be insanely profitable.