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Comment by OrvalWintermute | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem is you need to track all orbits for all constellations and free flyers as well as all orbital debris, and communicate across many communities of interest.

It is more national security & military adjacent

I’d stand up a joint agency for this requirement across DOD, NASA, NOAA, FAA, and Commercial Space/Newspace.

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Trying to save on a $55 million program by standing up a joint agency. I have truly heard it all now.

Doesn’t mean it needs much staff if leveraging pre-existing capabilities

Could def be done for cheaper than 55M

The US are by far not the only ones with satellites in orbit. Making it a UN body would make sense, just like the International Telecommunications Union coordinates telephone service and the International Postal Union coordinates international mail, and both are now UN bodies (despite predating the UN).

I have a feeling that the current US administration would not back such an idea, so this will end up back with the DOD, maybe the Space Force. Despite the DOD saying quite clearly they would prefer NOAA to do it

It seems this is already a thing on some form https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/spaceobjectregister/index.htm...

Having a joint program across all those would cost far more money.

The project managers and consultants to plan such a thing would probably cost several years of the current budget.

Not if staffed with a tiny office and reuse of capabilities from each. Potentially very small, platoon sized or smaller

10M annual spend, rest allocated to spend for services

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