It's true that there's no good reason to, say, drop out of geostationary and visit a tanker in LEO. Plane changes are always expensive, altitude changes are what they are, but if your orbit is reasonably compatible it would take a whole lot less delta V to reach a tanker than it would to come back to the planet's surface and re-launch!
This depot is in a sun-synchronous orbit. There are a ton of long-term, extremely expensive, Earth-observing satellites between 600 and 800 km with inclinations of 98 degrees in this area. Yes, it's a large volume of space, and yes, it's not like you can just point yourself at another satellite, fire a thruster, and coast over to it, but if you could extend the lifetime of your billion-dollar meteorological satellite for a few million you might want to have this thing fly over to refuel you.
I doubt that they'll be moving massive satellites with huge telescopes, radars, communication dishes, and solar arrays to the tanker, rather, they'll fly the tanker to the satellites.
This depot is in a sun-synchronous orbit. There are a ton of long-term, extremely expensive, Earth-observing satellites between 600 and 800 km with inclinations of 98 degrees in this area. Yes, it's a large volume of space, and yes, it's not like you can just point yourself at another satellite, fire a thruster, and coast over to it, but if you could extend the lifetime of your billion-dollar meteorological satellite for a few million you might want to have this thing fly over to refuel you.
I doubt that they'll be moving massive satellites with huge telescopes, radars, communication dishes, and solar arrays to the tanker, rather, they'll fly the tanker to the satellites.