ESA felt no such thing. What you are recalling here is Jonathan O’Calaghan’s opinion that whoever was in an orbit first automatically has right of way. ESA’s t

ESA felt no such thing. What you are recalling here is Jonathan O’Calaghan’s opinion that whoever was in an orbit first automatically has right of way. ESA’s take on the matter is that it was annoying that they couldn’t contact SpaceX, and that relying on email and phone calls between humans is not going to work when there are tens of thousands of satellites in orbit. The Twitter thread which started this was about ESA’s plans to automate their entire collision detection and avoidance process, and a call for an industry consensus on processes and protocols for communicating facts and intentions between satellite operators, and a set of rules and policies for managing space traffic, similar to what is done for international air traffic today.