Space
Space law and who owns anything up there
A treaty framework from the 1960s, written for two states and no companies, now governing a commercial industry it did not anticipate.
Space
Launch, reuse, orbits and what the payload manifests reveal.
Space
How to follow space news without being misled
A small set of habits that separate an achievement from an announcement, and a schedule from an aspiration.
Space
Space telescopes and why they cost what they do
An instrument that must work perfectly, first time, with no repair possible, at a temperature near absolute zero, folded to fit in a fairing.
Space
Small satellites and what changed about spacecraft
A standardised form factor originally intended for teaching turned into a serious platform, and the consequences run through the whole industry.
Space
The Moon: why going back is harder than it sounds
It was done sixty years ago with slide rules, and repeating it sustainably is a different and considerably harder problem.
Space
Space weather and why it matters more than it did
Solar activity affects satellites, power grids, aviation and navigation, and the exposure has grown considerably as infrastructure has electrified.
Space
Starship-class vehicles and what fully reusable would mean
Recovering the second stage is the remaining hard problem, and solving it would change the economics more than booster reuse did.
Space
Launch costs: reading the numbers honestly
Dollars per kilogram is the standard figure and it hides orbit, integration, insurance and whether the price is a price at all.
Space
Space debris: the problem nobody owns
Tens of thousands of tracked objects, millions too small to track, and a governance framework built when orbit was empty.
Space
Satellite internet: what it does and does not solve
Low-orbit constellations genuinely changed rural connectivity, and the physics sets limits that marketing tends to skip.
Space
Why getting to Mars is harder than it looks
The launch is the easy part. Entry, landing, radiation, propellant and getting home are each unsolved at the required scale.
Space
Orbits, and why the choice constrains everything
A satellite orbit is not a location. It is a set of trade-offs about latency, coverage, lifetime and how many spacecraft you need.
Space
Reusable rockets: what actually changed
Recovering a booster is an engineering achievement. Turning it around cheaply is the part that altered the industry.