Orbit has never been cheaper to reach than today, but nearly every satellite is still built to be used once, then abandoned. Static constellations can be held at risk by a widening set of counterspace weapons, disposable platforms are feeding the on-orbit debris population, and the supply chains behind space hardware are increasingly contested, throttling space capability delivered to orbit.
We argue that controlled atmospheric re-entry and satellite reuse belong in the category of foundational infrastructure for space resilience and a circular orbital economy, addressing each of these problems. In current military doctrine on space resilience, every named resilience attribute is bounded by the assumption that the satellite is one-time-use (disposable). The returnable satellite is the missing element of a resilient architecture, and amortized economics favor reusable systems across a wide range of assumptions.
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