section_path: Environmental Impact/Resource use
section_name: Resource use
paragraph_text: Resource use
  
  Resource use is difficult to monitor and quantify for satellites and launch vehicles due to their commercially sensitive nature. However, aluminium is a preferred metal in satellite construction due to its lightweight and relative cheapness and typically constitutes around 40% of a satellite's mass. Through mining and refining, aluminium has numerous negative environmental impacts and is one of the most carbon-intensive metals. Satellite manufacturing also requires rare elements such as lithium, gold, and gallium, some of which have significant environmental consequences linked to their mining and processing and/or are in limited supply. Launch vehicles require larger amounts of raw materials to manufacture and the booster stages are usually dropped into the ocean after fuel exhaustion. They are not normally recovered. Two empty boosters used for Ariane 5, which were composed mainly of steel, weighed around 38 tons each, to give an idea of the quantity of materials that are often left in the ocean.