Post #4245896

2026-07-30 16:08 UTC

This company also posted an ex parte filing (which means they had a super special extra FCC meeting), their satellites are too fucking huge to even be physically possible. They just can't fucking do this. My estimate from looking at this ridiculous sketch is 8x60x10m solar panels... that's a reflecting area of 4800 m^2. The International Space Station, the biggest thing in orbit, has a solar panel area of about 3400 m^2.

Replies (6)

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social 2026-07-30 16:11

Sure, completely untested, brand-fucking-new company that has never built or launched a satellite. You can definitely launch 20,000 of the biggest satellites ever built. Oh apparently their first demo mission is scheduled for OCTOBER 2026? Gosh these guys are fucking unreal. The mission is listed as "power beaming demonstration" What does that even fucking mean? Guess they're going to fry some birds and maybe some pilots? Hm. Watch for that I guess.

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@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online 2026-07-30 17:15

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social Wait. Are they saying that they are magically going to build an entire new rocket in 3 months? This really is quite the scam.

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@mmdolbow@mapstodon.space 2026-07-30 16:12

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social they probably put one of those Spinal Tap blokes in charge of the design

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@jcarr@techhub.social 2026-07-30 16:20

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social The company is called "Cowboy Space" and they call their launch solution "Stampede"? I hate this timeline.

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@Bwacton@mastodon.social 2026-07-30 17:02

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social clearly you’re missing the point, the company doesn’t need to be successful for the founders to become multimillionaires. It just needs to sound feasible enough to fool the VCs so they can pay themselves ridiculous amounts of money and then ‘fail’ for a few years. Then they declare bankruptcy and walk away with all that money.

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@Doug_Bostrom@scicomm.xyz 2026-07-30 17:10

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social Even as they present larger targets for debris, avoidance-maneuvering these cumbersome objects in a reasonable timeframe will be difficult not only in terms of propellant consumption but possibly also structural fatigue. How many maneuvers will be needed over their lifespans? (which begs the question: what's the 1OO% reliable disposal plan, because for the long term it _has_ to be 100%)

Open ##4274150