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I think the thing you're salvaging is the orbital itself. That has value and the salvager should get a percentage of that. This requires international regulatio

I think the thing you're salvaging is the orbital itself. That has value and the salvager should get a percentage of that. This requires international regulation we don't have though.

PeterisP 5y ago
At least right now any particular "orbit space" does not have a meaningful value, as equivalent orbit spaces are available for free; while they aren't unlimited theoretically, they are essentially "first come first served" and there is no possible market for those spaces because current international treaties essentially permit any country to allow a launch in any free orbit and no country is permitted to make any exclusive claims to any parts of space that they are not actively using right now. So even if some country e.g. USA would pass some laws allowing to reserve some spot in a with an option to resell it, that would only mean that USA would prohibit their own launches to that orbit, but any other country (China, France, Russia, etc) could still authorize anyone to launch to that orbit and once the orbit is taken it would be illegal for the USA buyer to launch there, and there would be no right to any compensation from whoever took that spot, because according to current international law there can be no exclusive right to that spot.