Space junk
February 25, 2009 – 8:14 pm by JohnDebris from satellites and other random pieces of space junk are crowding the lower levels of outer space, to the extent that satellites and the Hubble Space Telescope are at risk for colliding with some of it at any given time (supposedly). I can imagine this problem will only get worse, and while it doesn’t seem to be a huge problem yet, I think it’s a good idea to think about solutions for it.
That AP article says,
Some suggest a cosmic cleanup is the way to go. Others say time, energy and funds are better spent on minimizing the likelihood of future crashes by improving information sharing.The informal discussions on the sidelines of a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which began Feb. 9 and ends Friday, arose from concern about the collision of a derelict Russian spacecraft and a working U.S. Iridium commercial satellite.
The Feb. 10 incident, which is still under investigation, generated space junk that could circle the Earth and threaten other satellites for the next 10,000 years; it added to the already worrying amount of debris surrounding the planet.
To [Nicholas L. Johnson, NASA’s chief scientist for orbital debris], the “true solution” in the long run is to go get the junk—or push it away to a higher altitude before it has time to crash into anything.
“Today’s environment is all right but the environment is going to get worse, therefore I need to start thinking about the future and how can I clean up sometime in the future,” he said.
Sounds responsible, uncharacteristic for a government bureaucrat.
[Richard] Crowther, an expert on space debris and so-called Near Earth Objects, suggested it was important to improve information-sharing about the location of objects in orbit to minimize future crashes since each collision creates more debris, further congesting Earth orbit.“The information to a large extent is out there, but the owners of the data tend to keep the information to themselves,” Crowther said, acknowledging that the U.S. has been “very good” about making its data publicly available.
To Brian Weeden, technical consultant at the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, the ideal scenario would involve the creation of a global network that would funnel data on the whereabouts of space debris into a clearing house for all.
“The vision we have is a network where a number of different countries — each of which has a sensor or radar — contributes data from that sensor or radar to a central location,” Weeden said.
The European Space Agency has begun a program that goes part way toward meeting that goal by monitoring space debris and setting up uniform standards to prevent future collisions far above the planet.
[...]
But a worldwide system is unlikely to be created any time soon. While the U.S., France and others have expressed informal interest, no state has pledged official support, Weeden said.
It seems to me that the libertarian tradition of homesteading rights and private property protection could solve this problem better than any State solution. Just as many libertarians have proposed that property rights in water could be enforced based on geographical coordinates and homesteading privileges in electromagnetic broadcast spectra can be (and were) enforced based on location and frequency, homesteading privileges in outer-space coordinates could be established and enforced by libertarian adjudication systems and a self-interested, reciprocal, international, common-law-type property protection system. But, that would basically require a libertarian or at least minarchist world, and States would never allow anything like private, community-based property protection to evolve.
As for information sharing, private companies and individuals, it seems to me, have historically proven themselves better at being open about sharing information, transmitting it efficiently, and acting on it for mutual benefit than governments have. The free-market price system compared with government fiat, for instance. States are governed by political thinking and everyone outside of the State is governed by economic thinking.
The article also said,
The informal discussions on the sidelines of a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which began Feb. 9 and ends Friday….
It is literally impossible for the United Nations or any nation-state to do anything peacefully. They exist, fund themselves, and execute their decisions by stealing from people, coercing people, threatening people, and beating, terrorizing, and murdering people. They decide things and declare things and force everyone under their jurisdiction (and often people outside of it) to do what they say, or else. There is nothing—literally nothing, zippo, zero, zilch, nada—the least bit peaceful about any government that has ever existed. “Peaceful government” is a perfect oxymoron, by definition.
