Comment by areoform | Hacker News Reader

Comment by areoform | Hacker News Reader

Being a lover of Space and SpaceX, this incident highlights why a goldilocks paradigm for regulation needs to exist for space. Not too much that it stifles innovation. Not too little that someone ends up Kesslerizing Near-Earth space.

Current regulations are largely successful at promoting commercial space flight, but there is a big transparency gap between civilian space flight agencies and private entities. Transparency should be one of the cornerstones of space regulations, but it isn’t. This incident raises multiple policy questions. Why can’t SpaceX move their satellite? Is it a no because an ion drive takes days to burn or is it a no because they don’t wanna? Either way, it exposes a flaw in SpaceX’s design and raises concerns about StarLink. When there are hundreds of StarLink satellites in the air, will SpaceX say no again if there’s a chance for collision? Will SpaceX be a responsible steward of Near-Earth space? If ion drives are insufficient to address this problem, should they be required to take a small amount of monopropellant as a precaution?

Transparency is essential for answering these questions and asking new ones. The one I’m most concerned about is the question, what are the pollution risks of LEO constellations? Ideally, before StarLink and other networks are up and running, I feel there should be a study of the pollution risk StarLink poses be it light pollution or debris. We shouldn’t repeat the failings of the 20th century in space.

> Either way, it exposes a flaw in SpaceX’s design

What is this statement based on? You are saying yourself that there's no information available to the public about this due to lack of transparency, yet in the next sentence you are making a bold statement about design flaws.

To me it sounds like there should be clear regulation about right of way in space. I haven't seen any information pertaining to SpaceX design so far.

> To me it sounds like there should be clear regulation about right of way in space

Common courtesy worldwide would be for the person causing the risk to move aside first. Worse still it was a private company working on a for-profit product forcing a public weather satellite to divert.

There's no need for regulation until bad actors show up.

Are we then saying there's an equivalent of domain squatting in space? Cause I could see all types of problems showing up if we call that common courtesy.

Domain squatting is on unused domains while this was an active public weather satellite already on an established orbit. Not at all comparable.

But the implication is then someone will launch a million tiny satellites doing nothing and occupy a million orbits.

That said, this was in my opinion very bad form for SpaceX, to the point I wonder if, as hinted in the article, they simply can’t do collision avoidance properly.

I don't follow - domain squatting takes a domain and makes it unusable for others, orbit squatting would take an unused orbit and make it unusable for others.

The fundamental question is whether you have the right to the exclusive use of an orbital path just because you were there first. This is unresolved but I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

Assigning value (public/private, research/commercial, etc.) to each parties use just muddies the waters. There needs to be an established resolution process and AFAIK there isn't one.

Domain squatting is taking an unused domain and leaving it unused. Google isn’t domain squatting google.com, just like ESA wasn’t orbit squatting.

Assigning value is also necessary. We reserve spectrum for public safety and eventually may need to reserve orbital paths in the same way. Seems like we are pretty far from filling up the sky even with current avoidance tech though.

No, because satellite orbits aren't owned or held by anyone. Not to mention all low orbits have decent amount of junk that's in the process of deorbiting.

> There's no need for regulation until bad actors show up.

What a ridiculous statement. I suppose you'd also suggest no need for traffic laws until there's a 50 car pileup?

Isn't that how most regulations come to be? People die and people realize it can be avoided?

Bad actors are sometimes involuntarily so.

Historically, that is exactly how we arrived at traffic laws.

Kessler syndrome stipulates that may not be a viable approach for orbital ethics/law.

Don’t we know what needs doing? Why do we have to reinvent the wheel?

Satellites don't "move" into each other's way. Orbits naturally end up that way. There's no one "causing the risk" in the first place. SpaceX could have just as easily asked the ESA to move their satellite as it was getting in the way of their satellite.

You conveniently avoid the fact that SpaceX inserted itself into a collision course with the ESA’s orbit, long after ESA had been there. Being that ESA has a “right of way” they asked SpaceX to take the action

The risk of a crash was 1 in 1,000. This is 10 times the threshold of 1 in 10,000 that requires a maneuver. Both of these satellites have been in orbit long enough for accumulated error to cause the satellite to drift from its predicted path. There are many satellite orbit-crossing events every day, and the accumulated drift is the primary cause of their orbits becoming close enough to require action. An anticipated collision that requires course correction is as close to a no-fault scenario as there can be.

ESA's orbit is itself constantly changing. Orbits are not fixed. They move constantly from orbital perturbation from Earth's gravity field, the moon's gravity field and, notably at these low altitudes, atmospheric drag. Again, who moved into who's path is not something you're going to determine. Yes SpaceX was lowering its orbit, but it's crossing hundreds of satellites paths by doing that, and even the orbit SpaceX satellites are in are shared by many other satellites. LEO is crowded.

I'm not entirely convinced this is the argument.

From what I've read so far, it seems that ESA was uncomfortable with the possibility of a collision to a degree that SpaceX could possibly be quite comfortable with - ESA wants > 1km distance, whereas SpaceX might be comfortable with much closer - they are quite different constellations.

Who has the right to dictate who has priority / which criteria is the right one?

I'm going to assume that the cost of ESA's satellite is much greater than SpaceX's StarLink module so obviously they have much more of an interest in preserving full functionality - BUT avoiding collisions is in everybody's best interests. Who is going to use their fuel? Who has right of way, and to what terms?

I think you have this right, not so much about appetite for risk but maybe telemetry on SpaceX's satellite (or a number of satellites in the swarm) gave them sufficient confidence that there was no issue?

Given SpaceX routinely send resupply missions to the ISS I would assume they have a fair amount of confidence when it comes to knowing the position of their vehicles.

Or just that Space doesn't care about losing 1 Satelite.

ESA collision passing distance was over 4km. So there was plenty of room between the satellites.

It just comes across as them being arseholes since no reason was given.

Typical 'better to ask permission than forgiveness' fuckery that companies featured on this site are famous for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com