True, but their demising technology appears to be quite good too. I had an interesting discussion at the Small Satellite conference in Utah with folks about demising and they mentioned starlink. "Good" demising has the 'slipstream' layer of the satellite burn up quickly on de-orbit and then the other bits are made purposely non-aerodynamic, especially with fastners which are designed to burn quickly to rapidly disassemble to satellite while it is still quite high so that the smaller pieces will have enough altitude to get to their "full demising" velocity on the way down.
The team I'm working with is just doing a cube sat which has pretty straightforward demising but overall it was interesting to see the thought and strategy that people put into this.
Yes. The sat people that I know in NL always show that same cradle-to-the-grave kind of thinking and it really influenced me how I'm looking at how other industries are dealing with this. It's funny because externalization is the name of the game in almost every industry and the only industry that actually goes off planet takes that 'what goes up must come down' again angle into account every step of the way.
The team I'm working with is just doing a cube sat which has pretty straightforward demising but overall it was interesting to see the thought and strategy that people put into this.