China Refueled a Satellite in Space and America Still Can’t. Why?
Every military satellite America owns launches with all the fuel it will ever have. When the tank runs dry, a satellite worth hundreds of millions of dollars becomes space junk. This week, Mike and Neal take a question from listener Aimee D. about whether the Space Force is sustainable, and the answer starts with a surprisingly thin supply chain: hydrazine, the main satellite fuel, comes from a single small plant in Louisiana.
Neal walks through why fuel is the real limit on a satellite’s life, from Landsat 7 running low to the $500 million geostationary satellites that sit over one spot for…
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