ULA’s Latest Launch: Global Spycraft, Carbon Receipts, and the Art of Looking Away
ULA’s Latest Launch: A Firework Display for a Planet Already on Fire
By [REDACTED], Senior Space Correspondent, somewhere between the Kármán line and the breakfast buffet
CAPE CANAVERAL—Another Tuesday, another column of white-hot money clawing its way past Florida’s thinning ozone layer. United Launch Alliance—those Boeing-Lockheed love-children who bill taxpayers the way boutique hotels bill for tap water—successfully lobbed a classified spy satellite into geostationary parking this week. The payload’s name is classified, its budget is classified, and its purpose is classified, but the symbolism was loud enough to hear from Brussels to Beijing: the West still believes the future is up there, even as the present down here keeps catching fire.
Globally, the launch is less a milestone than a recurring appointment, like a dentist visit you can’t cancel. Europe’s Ariane 6 is still on life support, Russia’s Angara keeps huffing glue in the corner, and China’s Long March rockets are so prolific they’ve started littering villages with spent boosters the way frat boys leave red Solo cups. Against this backdrop, ULA’s Atlas V is the dependable middle manager who never misses a deadline, wears the same tie every launch day, and will absolutely expense the after-party.
And yet the world watches, because rockets remain our prettiest lie. Governments buy them the way teenagers buy lottery tickets: technically voluntary, fundamentally delusional. The satellite now circling 35,786 kilometers above the equator will allegedly keep watch over “areas of national interest,” a euphemism so elastic it could stretch from Pyongyang to your encrypted group chat. Meanwhile, the same nations funding orbital panopticons still can’t keep diesel out of their own rivers. One half of humanity is perfecting the art of seeing everything; the other half is perfecting the art of pretending not to be seen.
Down on Earth, the launch’s ripple effects are already being monetized. South Korean telecoms are quietly renegotiating bandwidth leases; Israeli startups are retooling their synthetic-aperture radar apps; and somewhere in an air-conditioned suite in Singapore, a fund manager just added “space-based intelligence layer” to the pitch deck for his new ESG fund, right under the slide about planting mangroves. The global supply chain, that Rube Goldberg device we call civilization, now orbits on a diet of kerosene and paranoia.
For the developing world, the spectacle is both inspiration and insult. Kenya’s spaceport dreams still consist mostly of PowerPoint and potholes, while India’s ISRO—ever the budget airline of the cosmos—continues to launch satellites at prices that make ULA accountants reach for the Xanax. Watching an Atlas V lift off is like watching your neighbor buy a Lamborghini with the rent money you lent him last month: awe, envy, and the quiet certainty you’ll never see that cash again.
Climate diplomats, ever the killjoys, pointed out that a single launch emits roughly the same CO₂ as a transatlantic flight carrying an entire climate conference. ULA countered by noting their new Vulcan rocket will use “more sustainable” engines—translation: they’ll still torch hydrocarbons, but now with a green PowerPoint slide and a donation to a wetlands charity somewhere in Louisiana. Progress, like a good tax shelter, is all about the paperwork.
And so the satellite joins its silent siblings, an ever-thickening belt of metal birds humming lullabies to the apocalypse. They watch glaciers retreat, methane leaks bloom, and container ships inch across oceans like ants on a dying picnic blanket. Up there, the view is spectacular; down here, the smell is getting worse.
Which brings us, dear reader, to the inevitable conclusion: every rocket launch is a funeral pyre for the last generation’s optimism, set alight by the next generation’s credit card. We keep sending better eyes into the sky because we’ve lost the stomach to look at ourselves in the mirror. The good news is we can now photograph our mistakes in 30-centimeter resolution. The bad news? We still hit “enhance” instead of “delete.”
Somewhere in the Pacific, a retired booster stage is sinking beneath the waves, trailing rust and regret. It will make excellent reef material for the fish that survive us. That, at least, qualifies as recycling.
