As the rocket fuels, the ingot is doing its only job: being heavy. It pushes the center of gravity aft, reducing bending loads on the interstage.
The ingot is mounted to the top of the kick stage or the center of the rideshare stack. Engineers perform a “mass moment of inertia” (MMI) test, spinning the stack to ensure the simulated weight matches the flight software.
This is the ingot’s moment of sacrifice. The upper stage performs a “ballast jettison” burn. Explosive bolts fire. Pneumatic pushers shove the ingot away from the stack at 1.5 meters per second. launch ingot
Environmentalists are beginning to push back. “Each ingot has the kinetic energy of a freight train at orbital velocity,” says Dr. Liam O’Rourke, an orbital debris researcher at MIT. “We are intentionally placing dense, un-trackable bricks in high-traffic lanes. One collision with a Starlink satellite and the shrapnel cloud takes out a hundred more.”
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. As the rocket fuels, the ingot is doing
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.
The fairing jettisons. The ingot, still bolted in place, is now exposed to the vacuum of space. It heats up to 120°C on the sun-facing side and drops to -100°C on the dark side. It doesn’t care. Engineers perform a “mass moment of inertia” (MMI)
Cape Canaveral, FL – When a rocket screams off the launch pad, the world watches the fire. We track the fairing separation, the stage cutoff, and the beautiful ballet of satellite deployment.