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UN banned Apollo Fusion's business model of using mercury rocket propellant to launch satellites into space (spectrum.ieee.org)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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UN banned Apollo Fusion's business model of using mercury rocket propellant to launch satellites into space::Startup Apollo Fusion was building thrusters that could have contaminated the upper atmosphere with the toxic metal

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Launching rockets is a competitive market? TIL, I thought there were only a handful of companies operating with very generous margins

Oh, it is definitely a competitive market at the moment, there are dozens of space startups with new rocket ideas trying to replace the old rocket companies. And many of these companies are seeing some great success, there's SpaceX and rocketlab of course, but firefly aerospace is also doing great, Stoke aerospace has the most innovative design I've seen in a while and may have a viable design for a fully reusable rocket. But there are many many more companies building rockets right now.

I've never heard of mercury propellent though, that sounds like a supremely terrible idea. And they would certainly need more than that to be competitive. Today, reusability and efficient construction techniques are the key to competitiveness, not novel propellants.