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There are rules for satellite designs in place and evolving to address this. You can't just leave things in GEO they must have been launched with a lifecycle pl

There are rules for satellite designs in place and evolving to address this. You can't just leave things in GEO they must have been launched with a lifecycle plan and suitable fuel/propulsion to move to a dead parking orbit.

alkonaut 9y ago
I think I heard of that too. But in order to improve these rules need to be extended to fund the cleanup (i.e. a fund for cleaning up any old debris + the fraction of satellites whose decomissioning doesn't work). Otherwise, the situation is slowly getting worse anyway. Do you know if the rules also mandate that you can't leave fairings, rocket parts etc. in orbit?
- GlenTheMachine 9y ago
  For the most part, it really isn’t possible to clean up space debris. The fuel requirements are orders of magnitude too high.
SilasX 9y ago
Enforced by what bodies? (Not trying to be cheeky, I really want to know. The primary problem here isn’t specifying rules but enforcing them among superpowers.)
- jerf 9y ago
  At the moment, common consensus is strong enough. There isn't anyone who has the precise combination of the discipline and foresight necessary to have a functioning space program at all, and the lack of discipline and foresight to not care at all about Kessler syndrome, and/or not be directly impacted by it. It would seem to me to require a contradictory level of long-term thinking and lack of long-term thinking. If a rogue actor (in the parlance of the age) managed to put together enough of a space program that they could make a few launches, but felt they personally had no stake beyond that, they could try to deliberately trigger the Kessler catastrophe, but at the moment I'm not aware of anyone who is there. (Even the gulf between suborbital missiles and true orbit is fairly large.) And it would have to be a truly rogue actor, not merely one sponsored by a superpower who does have an interest in the orbital space staying useful, e.g., North Korea and their complicated relationship with China, so not a puppet of the US, China, Russia, the EU, etc.

alkonaut 9y ago

I think I heard of that too. But in order to improve these rules need to be extended to fund the cleanup (i.e. a fund for cleaning up any old debris + the fraction of satellites whose decomissioning doesn't work). Otherwise, the situation is slowly getting worse anyway. Do you know if the rules also mandate that you can't leave fairings, rocket parts etc. in orbit?

GlenTheMachine 9y ago
For the most part, it really isn’t possible to clean up space debris. The fuel requirements are orders of magnitude too high.

SilasX 9y ago

Enforced by what bodies? (Not trying to be cheeky, I really want to know. The primary problem here isn’t specifying rules but enforcing them among superpowers.)

jerf 9y ago
At the moment, common consensus is strong enough. There isn't anyone who has the precise combination of the discipline and foresight necessary to have a functioning space program at all, and the lack of discipline and foresight to not care at all about Kessler syndrome, and/or not be directly impacted by it. It would seem to me to require a contradictory level of long-term thinking and lack of long-term thinking. If a rogue actor (in the parlance of the age) managed to put together enough of a space program that they could make a few launches, but felt they personally had no stake beyond that, they could try to deliberately trigger the Kessler catastrophe, but at the moment I'm not aware of anyone who is there. (Even the gulf between suborbital missiles and true orbit is fairly large.) And it would have to be a truly rogue actor, not merely one sponsored by a superpower who does have an interest in the orbital space staying useful, e.g., North Korea and their complicated relationship with China, so not a puppet of the US, China, Russia, the EU, etc.