Pentagon's In-Orbit Satellite Recycling Program Moving Forward

An anonymous reader writes with an update on DARPA's plans to rebuild satellites in orbit. "A year old DARPA program which aims to recycle satellites in orbit has started its next phase by looking for a guinea pig defunct satellite to use for evaluating the technology required. The program involves a Dr Frankensat 'complete with mechanical arms and other "unique tools"' and blank "satlets" to build upon.' Need parts! Kill the little one!" If we're ever going to build space craft and other things in orbit, this seems like a great first step.

Comments

Pentagon work

[crazyjj]

If it's typical Pentagon work, it will be contracted out to a bunch of Senators' favorite contractors, will end up costing 10x the original projection in just the first year, and after several years of failures and cost overruns they'll either quietly scrap the program entirely or end up spending an order of magnitude more to refurb a single satellite than to just launch a new one--all to produce a refurb which will be wonky, useless, and failure prone.