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Comment by hermannj314 | Hacker News Reader

Identify the externalities that aren't being paid and make them get paid. And if this means that we all end up paying more for services we use today that create space debris, then fine.

The next generation is being fleeced by those with the means of production. They extract as much profit as they can and ignore the damage left in their wake. Added to that they fight tooth and nail at any government policy that tries to make them pay for externalities they should rightfully assume.

Of course, the traditional capitalist model says suck what you can today and then expect the spillover to get paid by the taxpayer tomorrow.

What a world we have left for all of humankind's children merely for the benefit of the contemporary capitalist and consumer.

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It's interesting that you think that this is an issue of capitalism, when it has nothing to do with capitalism at all. The vast majority of space junk is the result of governmental programs like NASA and its peers [1].

[1]http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast...

In fairness, I don't imagine private space companies would be careful about their debris unless someone else made them.

You are right, but I'm not going to let the facts get in the way of a perfectly good rant!

I'm not sure what word I should have used, but my fundamental point was that as long as decision-makers, be they corporations, individuals, or government entities, are allowed to make decisions without considering the cost of the mess they make (because they don't have to pay for it), then we are burdening those who will have to clean up the mess and don't even have a voice in our Democratic process.

You're correct. Its the absence of a system of property rights that caused this problem. Its the opposite of capitalism, as is the case with many things that get polluted.

Space is an example of the tragedy of the commons. No one owns space so the incentive is to exploit it now without regard to what happens in the long run.

I think property rights are the answer, but until they are applied to something new, it is non-obvious how to go about it. I have a few, not fully baked thoughts.

What if someone owned the satellite real estate in a particular region of space? They would have an interest in keeping it orderly to maximize revenue.

The owner could charge rent to anyone wanting to put up a satellite in that space. That party would also have to provide a way to remove it and would be charged for accidents that spread debris.

The owners of different regions would compete against each other so we could keep prices reasonable. And other uses of space, such as passage through those regions could be left out of the arrangement.

And if debris from one region impacts another, they owners could sue each other.

> What if someone owned the satellite real estate in a particular region of space? They would have an interest in keeping it orderly to maximize revenue.

In my mind this would only apply to geostationary orbit. Doing anything else would require incredibly complex coordination of "regions" of space, considering orbits are constantly moving with relation to each other and to the Earth.

well, satellites can be geostationary. Not all are. Some travel through a layer of space. You could do this for layers and cover both.

actually, an entire layer would mean all satellites at a specific distance would be renting from the same owner.

I guess that layer would sell for more initially and still compete with other layers that aren't ideal. Or we could have separate scheme for geostationary satellites.

OK, who will make China pay a fee for junk they deliberately created in space for military purposes?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mis... before complaining that I'm unfairly singling out China.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/files/debris.JPG

This graph seems to indicate that the Chinese anti-satellite test moved the number of objects from ~10700 to ~13900, or about 3200 objects released. Now that we are at about 16000 objects, 3200 is closer to 20% (in fact is is exactly 20%) than 10% of all objects.

Different sources will quote different numbers of objects.

The reason is that there were millions of debris particles. So you find counts of different sizes.

I got 10% by comparing the number in the Wikipedia article over a certain size with the number of objects that NASA is actively tracking. If NASA is actively tracking at a different size threshold, that would explain the discrepancy.

Regardless of the exact numbers, this Chinese test is clearly a significant part of the problem by itself. And the altitude chosen means that it will continue to be a problem for a very, very long time.

Anyone who trades with them?

To make an honest attempt at addressing the problem, you'd need an international treaty. And -- not unlike Kyoto -- unless it included penalties up to and including automatic tariffs to collect those penalties, it would be pointless.

Still, you are unfairly singling out China. From the article you linked:

"It was the first known successful satellite intercept test since 1985, when the United States conducted a similar anti-satellite missile test"

"In February 2008 the US launched its own strike to destroy a malfunctioning US satellite, which demonstrated to the world that it also had the capability to strike in space"

China's test created far more debris than any previous incident, including the US incident you point to. Furthermore China created that debris in a much higher orbit so it will take much longer for it to naturally fall out of orbit.

That single incident is responsible for something like 10% of all debris in orbit that is large enough to be tracked by NASA.

It was not my intention to defend China. But what's with the other 90% of debris? 40% USA, 40% Russia, 10% other is not far from the truth, I guess.

It's closer to 20% due to China's ASAT test and 80% due to the collective spaceflight activities of the entire world over the last half century. You know, vs. one single event.

If China dumped as much garbage into the ocean in one event equal to 20% of the entire world's ocean dumped garbage since 1957 you can be damned sure they'd catch some flak for that.

I don't know why people in US automatically think they have the right to do anything they want, yet when somebody else does the same they find every reason to brand them evil conveniently neglecting everything they did.

There is no point in trying to act innocent, space or other wise US has been screwing earth since decades now. Wars, weapons and emissions all in the name of development. Yet now when some other countries do the exactly all that for similar reasons, they become bad?

Did you even read the comment? One Chinese demonstration created 10% of all objects we can track. The US demonstration was held in a much lower orbit and most of the fragments it created have probably burned in the atmosphere by now.

The events are not comparable. The Chinese test represented wanton disregard for orbital debris, to an extreme degree. The US anti-satellite tests (in 1985 and 2008) were on low-altitude satellites using sub-orbital weapons. This led to much smaller debris plumes that reentered the atmosphere in a short period of time (weeks or months).

Look at the graph I posted earlier: http://blogs.nature.com/news/files/debris.JPG

Can you see the impact of the debris created by the 1985 ASAT test? No? Can you see the little bump that starts in early 2008 and goes away by 2009 that represents the debris generated by the 2008 US ASAT test? Now look at the impact of the Chinese test, it's night and day. And that's due to the altitude of the event (865 km, well above the outer fringes of the atmosphere, where orbital decay is very, very slow) and the nature of the impact from a counter-orbiting kinetic-kill vehicle, which dumped at least 4 times as much kinetic energy into the impact at the very least.

While launch vehicle and satellite makers have been trying to make their launches cleaner and leave less debris in orbit here comes China to dump in one go the same amount of debris that it takes the ENTIRE WORLD two full decades to generate. In fact, they produced about twice as much debris as the worst case natural space disaster imaginable, two satellites hitting one another (the Iridium 33 / Kosmos 2251 collision).

We and Russia and the UK and France and Japan and Israel and South Korea, and on and on. We ALL left junk in space.

So I guess we ALL pay? And pay who? A space=based clean up crew? I doubt we even have the technology to clean it up. Right now.

Should we contact the Illuminati and make sure the "One World Government" charges a fee?

How would you force China, India and Russia and other pseudo capitalist countries to pay, let alone the United States, Europe etc?

If the UN enforced a fee of some sort, why wouldn't we just offshore space launches to a country that ignores the UN.

Of course, you are right. You can't force anyone to do anything.

And yet, remarkably, international cooperation on many issues still exists. Practicality come down to being diplomatic and being compromising.

You are right - it is difficult many groups of people (e.g. Dominionist Christians that think the rapture will happen in their lifetime) to even understand the need for policies of long-term sustainability.

I think you're right to criticise capitalism's approach to so called externalities. It's a convenience to not treat limited resources as depreciating assets, for the purposes of competitive advantage. And near space is a limited resource. As are oceans and accessible space and atmosphere and so on.

The normal solution is a market based allowance cap, An example from another resource area are carbon taxes that give pricing to carbon.

Pointing out that accounting rules don't correctly price scarcity is not really a criticism of capitalism per se.

It could potentially be a major business model to clean this junk up too. Satellite insurers will eventually asess the risk high enough that it will be profitable to pay someone to take care of it. Onward oppression of the working class!

There is a decent discussion that could be had regarding how capitalism should deal with negative externalities. However your equating of 'Traditional Capitalism' with 20th century American Capitalism mars everything you said.

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