Launch Ingot May 2026

Rawlings laughs, rubbing a scar on his knuckle. “But nobody respects it. You’ll see a team treat a cubesat like a newborn baby—gloves, microscopes, prayers. Then they toss the ingot on the dolly like a bag of cement. Last month, a guy dropped a 300-pounder on his foot. Crushed three toes.”

Enter the ballast mass.

In response, several startups are now developing —magnesium-aluminum alloys designed to re-enter and fully ablate within 90 days. Others are experimenting with hollow water ingots (frozen, then sublimated in space), though the risk of ice shards damaging the fairing remains high. The Technician’s Curse Back on the ground, the ingot enjoys a strange kind of reverence. launch ingot

For now, it is indispensable. Without ballast masses, the economics of rideshare collapse. You cannot fly a variable menu of small satellites without a fixed counterweight. Rawlings laughs, rubbing a scar on his knuckle

This is the . And without it, the satellite industry would grind to a halt. The Ballast Problem To understand the ingot, you first have to understand physics. A rocket is a column of fire seeking balance. To fly straight, its center of gravity must sit perfectly above its center of thrust. But the primary payload—say, a massive GEO communications satellite—rarely fits that equation on its own. Then they toss the ingot on the dolly like a bag of cement