4 ms·
It's all fun and games until Musk locks us in with tons of Starlink debris. I think public funded organizations (which these private orgs operate with a lot of
by stuntkite 5y ago
It's all fun and games until Musk locks us in with tons of Starlink debris. I think public funded organizations (which these private orgs operate with a lot of public funds) are more incentivized to not launch their car (stolen from their ousted business partner) into space.
- trompetenaccoun 5y agoThere needs to be regulation for sure, but that means holding everyone accountable, private space companies and governments. US, Russian and Chinese government programs have already created more debris than private companies could afford even if they tried. The 2007 Chinese anti-missile test alone left a debris field with over 35000 pieces larger than 1 cm, hundreds of them of really significant size. This was intentional! Private companies on the other hand will do everything to avoid collisions and further debris, it goes against their financial interest and only hinders their own operations.
- stuntkite 5y agoI am unsure of your reasoning that private companies have any incentive not to absolutely destroy the thing they are exploiting. It's exceedingly rare for any quarterly growth based company to not do whatever to maximize profit in 3 months. Good examples might be the ocean being on fire recently, leaded gas, the tobacco industry, the sugar or corn industry, oil and gas (obviously), facebook, cable news, the panama/paradise papers, or Ticketmaster.
- trompetenaccoun 5y agoTo take your obvious oil and gas example, it would be like them setting their own wells on fire. Oil companies are very keen on avoiding this, the same way a space company would try to avoid trashing earth orbit because that would destroy their business.
- 8note 5y agoI don't care if it's nasa or musk branded debris locking us in. Having Musk's name on it doesn't make it any deadlier