Cadence is destiny, and the cadence question for the 2020s launch market has quietly shifted. Rideshare launches — a SpaceX Transporter mission carrying dozens of satellites — are cheap precisely because everyone shares one ride to one drop-off orbit. But "one drop-off orbit" is the catch: a rideshare payload lands where the rocket was going, not where the operator wants it. Closing that gap is the job of in-space transportation, and it is becoming its own business.
Montero USA's grant US12643684B2, "Method of space transportation using a distributed network of space tugs" (issued June 2, 2026), describes the architecture for that layer. Its CPC tags read like a map of the problem: B64G 1/2427 and B64G 1/242 (orbit transfer and station-keeping), B64G 1/1078 (servicing/capture), and B64G 1/646 / 1/6462 (docking and coupling). The claimed method is not a single super-tug but a distributed network — multiple cooperating vehicles that hand payloads along, the way a parcel moves through sorting hubs rather than riding one truck door to door.
Here is the mechanism in plain terms. A rocket deposits payloads into a common parking orbit. A tug rendezvouses with a payload, captures it, and uses its own propulsion to raise, lower, or change the inclination of the orbit before releasing it at the destination. Distributing that across a network means a payload can be passed between tugs optimized for different legs — a far more fuel-flexible model than asking one vehicle to do everything, and one that lets the network amortize expensive tugs across many customers.
The reusability math is what makes this interesting as a market, not just an engineering exercise. A launch vehicle is spent (or, increasingly, recovered) after one flight; a tug that lingers in orbit can serve payload after payload, its cost spread across a manifest of jobs. That is the same economic logic that reusability brought to launch, applied one altitude band higher — and it is why operators like Momentus, Impulse Space, and others are racing to own the segment.
What the patent does not settle is who wins. A granted method is a stake in the ground, not a fielded fleet, and in-space logistics is littered with announced-but-undemonstrated capability. The distinction this site insists on — announced versus demonstrated — applies in full here: the claim describes how a distributed tug network would operate, not a network that is operating. Capture and docking in particular remain hard, expensive, and lightly flight-proven.
Watch the manifest for the signal. As rideshare volume grows, the value of precise final-orbit delivery grows with it, and the patents around tugs, capture mechanisms, and orbit transfer are where that value is being claimed first. The last mile of orbit is following the same path the launch itself did: from a custom, expensive, one-off into a networked service — and the IP is being written before the fleets fly.