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Satellites encased in wood are in the works

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/01/21/satellites-encased-in-wood-are-in-the-works
33•andsoitis•3d ago

Comments

gnabgib•1h ago
https://archive.is/3qot3

Related (same company) on this recycled post from econo:

Wooden satellite heads to space in Mars exploration test (105 points, 2024, 71 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42051687

Japan to launch first wooden satellite to combat space pollution (55 points, 2024, 17 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414641

Related - different company:

Woodsat: A Space Agency Will Launch a Tiny, Wooden Satellite (105 points, 2021, 18 comments)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27549097

alnwlsn•1h ago
I could have sworn I remember hearing about some historical satellites involving wood in some way and I guess it was this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanhui_Shi_Weixing

>The successful recovery of an FSW-0 recoverable satellite in 1974 established China as the third nation to launch and recover a satellite

>A novel feature of the spacecraft's re-entry module was the use of impregnated oak, a natural material, as the ablative material for its heat shield.

Edit: as usual, Scott Manley has it covered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtxYP9fLMmk

trhway•54m ago
may be a material of future - "compressed" wood stronger and lighter than steel https://www.fastcompany.com/91334748/superwood-stronger-than...

"has a 50% greater tensile strength than steel and a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better. "

fredthompson•52m ago
Uh...nothing new here....been done many, many years ago because...easy way to stealth a satellite...
fouc•50m ago
Interesting… apparently the advantages are:

    * cheaper material
    * naturally dampens vibrations -> can potentially help sensitive instruments
    * naturally insulates heat better -> saves power on heating
    * doesn't block radio frequencies -> lower drag in low orbits -> 50% longer orbital time
    * fully burns up on re-entry
fuddle•48m ago
Next, we'll be building Treeships.

https://hyperioncantos.fandom.com/wiki/Treeship

Render Mermaid diagrams as SVGs or ASCII art

https://github.com/lukilabs/beautiful-mermaid
95•mellosouls•2h ago•14 comments

We can't send mail farther than 500 miles (2002)

https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles
19•giancarlostoro•33m ago•4 comments

Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/28/maine-lobster-lady-dies-aged-105
58•NaOH•2h ago•5 comments

Mecha Comet – Open Modular Linux Handheld Computer

https://mecha.so/comet
47•Realman78•3d ago•12 comments

Satellites encased in wood are in the works

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/01/21/satellites-encased-in-wood-are-in-the...
34•andsoitis•3d ago•6 comments

Trinity large: An open 400B sparse MoE model

https://www.arcee.ai/blog/trinity-large
144•linolevan•1d ago•41 comments

Airfoil (2024)

https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/
392•brk•13h ago•50 comments

Questom (YC F25) is hiring an engineer

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/questom/jobs/UBebsyO-founding-engineer
1•ritanshu•1h ago

Did a celebrated researcher obscure a baby's poisoning?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/02/did-a-celebrated-researcher-obscure-a-fatal-poisoning
113•littlexsparkee•1d ago•40 comments

Show HN: A MitM proxy to see what your LLM tools are sending

https://github.com/jmuncor/sherlock
121•jmuncor•9h ago•49 comments

Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance

https://alecmuffett.com/article/143548
426•wubin•6h ago•105 comments

Show HN: Shelvy Books

https://shelvybooks.com
14•tekkie00•3h ago•7 comments

Android's desktop interface leaks

https://9to5google.com/2026/01/27/android-desktop-leak/
184•thunderbong•1d ago•264 comments

Bf-Tree: modern read-write-optimized concurrent larger-than-memory range index

https://github.com/microsoft/bf-tree
59•SchwKatze•6h ago•12 comments

Mousefood – Build embedded terminal UIs for microcontrollers

https://github.com/ratatui/mousefood
177•orhunp_•11h ago•42 comments

Oban, the job processing framework from Elixir, has come to Python

https://www.dimamik.com/posts/oban_py/
198•dimamik•11h ago•82 comments

Tesla ending Models S and X production

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/28/tesla-ending-model-s-x-production.html
137•keyboardJones•5h ago•172 comments

Computer History Museum Launches Digital Portal to Its Collection

https://computerhistory.org/press-releases/computer-history-museum-launches-digital-portal-to-its...
129•ChrisArchitect•10h ago•22 comments

UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

https://mahadk.com/posts/ai-skills-hub
264•JustSkyfall•5h ago•75 comments

Hellenistic War-Elephants and the Use of Alcohol Before Battle

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/hellenistic-warelephants-and-...
40•perihelions•5d ago•18 comments

LM Studio 0.4

https://lmstudio.ai/blog/0.4.0
99•jiqiren•10h ago•60 comments

Spinning around: Please don't – Common problems with spin locks

https://www.siliceum.com/en/blog/post/spinning-around/
91•bdash•11h ago•32 comments

Show HN: Pinecone Explorer – Desktop GUI for the Pinecone vector database

https://www.pinecone-explorer.com
12•arsentjev•1d ago•0 comments

When Every Network is 192.168.1.x

https://netrinos.com/blog/conflicting-subnets
82•pcarroll•14h ago•69 comments

Some notes on starting to use Django

https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/01/27/some-notes-on-starting-to-use-django/
216•ingve•1d ago•113 comments

The Five Levels: From spicy autocomplete to the dark factory

https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2026/01/the-five-levels-from-spicy-autocomplete-to-the-software-f...
44•benwerd•5d ago•49 comments

In a genre where spoilers are devastating, how do we talk about puzzle games?

https://thinkygames.com/features/in-a-genre-where-information-is-sacred-and-spoilers-are-devastat...
48•tobr•5d ago•34 comments

Amazon cuts 16k jobs

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/amazon-cuts-16000-jobs-globally-broader-restructuring-20...
587•DGAP•12h ago•810 comments

I overengineered a spinning top [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp5NodfvvF4
135•bane•6d ago•40 comments

B.A.T.M.A.N Protocol Concept (2011)

https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki/BATMANConcept
8•jstrieb•4d ago•2 comments