Paper is cheap. That’s the first thing they teach you in the defense sector, right after they teach you how to bill the government for a $200 hammer.

Day 2 of the DefSAT conference in Delhi wasn’t about hardware. It wasn’t about the roar of engines or the cold vacuum of the thermosphere. It was about ink. Specifically, six separate Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) exchanged between space startups, legacy giants, and the kind of shadowy entities that keep the lights on in the Pentagon and its local equivalents.

An MoU is a corporate "vibe check." It’s a non-binding promise to maybe, eventually, do something useful together if the funding rounds materialize and the geopolitical winds don’t shift. On Thursday, the vibes were supposedly immaculate.

Six of them. Six pieces of paper signed with expensive pens in a room that smelled faintly of hotel air freshener and desperation.

The players involved are chasing the "dual-use" dream. It’s the current buzzword for tech that can track a climate-change-induced flood on Monday and a hostile troop movement on Tuesday. We’re talking about companies like GalaxEye, which is trying to mesh radar and optical sensors into a single satellite, or the various outfits promising to "secure" our orbital assets. They’re all standing in line, hats in hand, hoping the Ministry of Defence decides their specific flavor of orbital surveillance is the one that deserves a slice of the national budget.

But here’s the friction. Space is getting crowded, and not in a "look at the stars" kind of way. It’s crowded in a "don’t scratch my billion-dollar paint job" kind of way.

The real tension at DefSAT isn’t between the companies signing these papers; it’s between the ambition of a private space sector and the cold, hard reality of the physics involved. You can sign all the MoUs you want, but you can’t negotiate with the Kessler syndrome. Every time a new startup launches a constellation of "micro-satellites" to provide "real-time intelligence," the chance of a debris chain reaction goes up. The cost of launch might be dropping—thanks to the billionaire space race—but the cost of staying up there without getting shredded by a frozen paint chip is skyrocketing.

One specific deal caught the eye of the room: a collaboration focused on "secure satellite communications." It sounds boring until you realize the price tag for getting these things wrong. We aren’t talking about dropped Zoom calls. We’re talking about the backbone of modern warfare. If these MoUs don't turn into hardened, jam-resistant hardware within the next 18 months, they’re just expensive placemats for the next gala dinner.

The startups are eager. They talk about "agile development" and "pivoting." The generals in the front row, meanwhile, look like they’re wondering if these kids can actually deliver a downlink that doesn't die the second a solar flare looks at it funny. There’s a massive gap between a slick slide deck and a satellite that survives a launch on a rocket built by the lowest bidder.

Let's talk about the money. Most of these "partnerships" don't actually involve cash upfront. They involve "resource sharing." That’s code for "you use my office space, and I’ll use your lobbyists." It’s a shell game played at 17,000 miles per hour. The Indian space sector is trying to mimic the SpaceX model of rapid iteration, but they’re doing it with a fraction of the venture capital and ten times the bureaucratic red tape. Every signature on Day 2 was an attempt to cut through that tape, or at least pretend it isn't there.

The conference halls were full of talk about "sovereign capabilities." It’s the polite way of saying we don’t want to rely on Elon Musk’s Starlink if things get messy. It’s a noble goal. It’s also an incredibly expensive one. Building a domestic orbital defense layer isn't something you do with six MoUs and a few handshake photos posted to LinkedIn. It requires a level of sustained industrial stamina that most startups simply don’t have.

By the time the afternoon tea was served, the press releases were already hitting the wires. "Strategic alignment." "Synergistic growth." The words change, but the song stays the same. Everyone wants to be the one who owns the high ground.

But as the suits headed for the bar, one question remained hanging in the dry air of the convention center. If everyone is so busy signing agreements to cooperate, who is actually going to do the work of building something that doesn't explode on the pad?

Six MoUs. Six promises. Zero new satellites in orbit today.

We’ve reached the point in the space boom where the paperwork weighs more than the payloads. I wonder if anyone checked to see if the pens they used were space-rated, or if they just leaked all over the fine print.

How many of these partnerships will survive until the next fiscal year, and how many are just ghosts in the machine?