$150k sounds like a rounding error for a satellite operator. Is there a rapidly increasing fee schedule or other penalties, such us restricted future launches? Otherwise it would be folded into the regular operating expenses.
There are some places where this doesn't seem to operate very well, particularly in the financial world, but in general, this is often the idea behind these penalties. Especially for the first time a law is getting enforced; it isn't really very just to ignore a law for years/decades and then one day out of the blue slam someone with multi-million dollar judgments. There are even some Common Law doctrines that the targets could use to argue against such penalties holding up in court, though, as always, trying to counter a written law with common law general doctrines is tricky. But I'd say there's at least a good chance you could get a sudden, huge initial penalty argued way down in a lawsuit.
And OK, let's say they keep getting fined. Seems like a badge of honor these days. Move fast and break things, right? The government just doesn't like, get us, man. We're the good guys here and they're trying to slow us down with red tape and bureaucracy.
If you have several choices and one is getting sanctioned for shitty practices, maybe you’ll look elsewhere.
Saying you’re a rocket engineer sounds pretty neat, but the shine wears off a bit if people recognise your employer for negative reasons.
Which is what Tesla is experiencing at the moment in their facility Grünheide [1]... a toxic mixture of low wages, bad employment conditions, and reports about unsafe practices.
[1] https://t3n.de/news/tesla-gruenheide-personalmangel-und-ange...
I agree with the sentiment that the reputation hit is imaginary, and really only serves to prevent stiffer fines.
Actually, they shouldn't be charged a fine, instead, they should have to go and get it back.
Curious. Willing to bet some of these regulators kids end up at Dish over the next few years.
In reference to your previous question, along with the obvious brute fact of the fines not escalating for the same infraction over time, I would take a first stab at an answer being that the stronger the "revolving door" the less likely the fines are to be serious.
Note that just a one way industry -> regulator won't necessarily produce this effect, because in that situation a regulator can still want to flex by producing meaningful fines. But the more the cycle is industry -> regulator -> and back to industry, the more the regulator is going to be thinking in terms of what will come around when they're in the industry again.
If you read the consent decree[1] you can see that the monetary fee is not the only thing DISH agreed to.
In section 18 you can see they agreed to implement a compliance plan. Basically they improve on their fuel tracking, and end of mission planning. This makes it more likely that this thing won't happen again, and also makes it easier to argue if it still happens that it happened wilfully.
> Wouldn't they have also implemented a compliance program if they were fined 10% of revenue, you know to avoid future fines?
They would have spent up to 10% of revenue on lawyers and lobbying to get out of the fine entirely and thereby have no fear of another one.
But 10% of their revenue is $1.7B. It would cost them almost a decade's worth of profit, so that's how much they'd spend to prevent it, which is plenty enough to influence legislation. "Percent of revenue" fines are dumb and create crazy incentives.
This. There are other compliance conditions, and failure to comply means no more launch licenses.
Now, most probably nothing is out there waiting to get run over by a derelict Dish bird, but if there was...