Avoiding Traffic Pileups in Outer Space

Gen. John Hyten, calling for an international agreement on "behavior" in space. What a joke. Let's list the "international agreements" we've already signed but ignore at will.......Geneva Conventions, Declaration of Human Rights, NPT, UN Charter........

Mankind is rapidly filling every available venue for its garbage, detritus, and waste products. Like the oceanic plastic soup, near-Earth space will become an impenetrable fog of castaway junk and sattelite-collision debris. Good luck cleaning up after the naked apes are gone, Gaia.

No. No. No. The avaiation industry has been all but destroyed by regulations. There are now a only handful of manufacturers in the world that build a majority of our planes. General aviation in Amercia is constanlty under attack and regulation continue to squeeze private pilots out of the airspace. You clearly know nothing about how "controlled" airspaces continue to grow while "uncontrolled" airspace shrinks. Rules of the road, fine. But government regulation will suffocate the possibilites of space. Space should not be governed like China.

There are so many things wrong and dangerous about a free for all commercial race to space it boggles the mind. Does everything always have to be about private profit? Why is it vital for the economy? So we can be sold more junk like mobile phones and Facebook? Is that really the direction we need to be going? The difficulty and expense of getting into space led to rare moments of global cooperation. I'm thinking of the international space station. It seems tragic that we are now determined to destroy that with aggressive capitalistic motives. Is there no end? Now we'll have to start dealing with endless debris crashing to earth to add to the list of random accidents that can kill you. Great. I can't wait.

The notion that private businesses are going to manage space exploration in a manner that respects how they affect others when it might mean foregoing profits would be a ridiculous one to assert. Our experience tells us that while some people worry about how they affect others, other people calculate that worrying about others does not justify altering what they want to do. The space debris that already exists could have been anticipated and a plan to remove debris that would become a significant problem. Since most of it was created by entities who are accountable to the public in some manner, the notion that private entities will do anything better is kind of hard to imagine. However, if the debris does cause damage and injuries and if those affected could successfully recover compensation from those who left the debris, perhaps some kind of orderly disposal of debris might result.

“But these guidelines have been decades in the making...”. Well if that isn’t a perfect example of the efficiency of the UN I don’t know what is. Ok, Congress isn’t a lot faster, but it’s still inexcusable. And it’s true...when and if they finally do agree to something it will be outdated before the ink is even dry.

Two concerns: 1. If a single government entity is going to determine what can go up --and where-- let it be an agency driven by science, logic, and reason and not an agency with a mandate to grease the machinery of business and profit. 2. I'm more than a little troubled by how carefully the author elided his way past the defense considerations. Defense agencies of each nuclear power monitor satellites to detect nuclear attacks: not only do more satellites --and collision debris-- make it harder to find real threats, they also increase the likelihood of a false alarm starting armageddon, as nearly happened in the 80s when China's early warning system reported an incoming attack when its sensors picked up the oldest and largest satellite in orbit --the moon.

But just think of how beautiful those space rings of debris in the common of planet Earth will be from The Ritz Hotels on the moon and Mars. Eventually, viewing the rings would become a tourist draw and adventures to other plants would become an extreme sport adventure as self-driving spacecraft negotiate the "Famous Debris Fields of Earth" at 18,000 mph. Woopee!

The only way that American astronauts can get to and from the International Space Station is to pay Russia $ 70.7 million per astronaut. That certainly limits space traffic.

If space adventurers are regulated, it will spoil the free market for space enterprising. Listen to the ghost of Milton Friedman, and let the unlucky on Earth have space debris crashing into their domiciles as it might happen. Better to leave business people who need to shave costs kill a few people than lose the opportunity to make a lot of money.

For 15 years I was the manager of a large comm & defense contractor’s satellite mission control center. What I can say is that as the concept of the use of LEO orbits & the extent of the size of the constellations proposed identified itself as a considerable risk issue to address not just to other LEO satellites but MEO & GEO destined one’s. Those satellites, after launch, can be placed into orbits that swing though the LEO/MEO belts prior to moving them to roughly 35,800 km high. Satellites of this size are typically cost $100M+ & can take of 2-5 years to build. Safety is a priority. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) helps to resolve disputes on location & spacing of GEO birds, so an international organization works. Companies couldn’t launch a s/c into orbit until there was an approved ITU slot. With many large constellations, collision avoidance becomes of greater concern. Collisions can cause a spray of super speed particles to fan out even rising above its initial orbit. Though LEO orbits degrade, it does take time to happen, meanwhile hazard persists. Companies have sprung up offering collision avoidance services but complications arise with satellites still maneuvering (going to MEO/GEO/Mars). The launch of tiny unregulated satellites is deeply concerning. Some kind or international approval process reviewing orbits & risks, needs to be in place. We do not want to impact our ability to explore space with humans – low debris environments are critical.

Thank you for the links in the article. They are great starting points for further research into this vital issue. Humans have a special place in the Universe. It's sad to see it ending with the Holocene Extinction.

Space will eventually become unusable. After a few collisions there will be a cascade effect of debris taking out other satellites which in turn will take out more. After a while there'll be so much junk floating around the geosynchronous oriting zone will be unusable.

Sounds like we in the US need to increase taxes so we can better fund the US Space Licensing Bureau. Maybe more taxes on the billionaire class that would make most of the money from space development? Including inheritance taxes!

The space that the author would like governments to regulate is truly vast. The lowest orbit in Low Earth Orbit is a sphere with a radius of 4060 miles, and the highest is 5300 miles. The volume is on the order of 300 billion cubic miles--bigger than the volume of the Earth. I'd like the Times to get an dissenting opinion about how reckless putting up a few four-inch squares in that space really is. How much would regulation benefit established space powers at the expense of emerging nations like India?

We are unable to regulate what OUR school children bring into OUR schools, and you want to regulate what OTHER countries put in space? Bah! It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world! What of the "billions of dollars" lost in terms of lives/ "human resources"?

Perhaps the FCC should spend less time dictating fascist policies to Internet Service Providers and more time tracking satellites. Or perhaps they should spend more money on technology and less on HR, less on climate change, and less on pensions, healthcare, junkets, and top-executive salaries.

Dr. Butt, A worse can of worms opens, in my opinion. Since the early ‘60s, concern about orbiting debris has worried the community. Since most of the stuff was secret, including secret manned missions, there was plenty to justify there being no verifiable database. Even the Space Shuttle launched all sorts of military gear without attached labels. Along comes Reagan, and a new entrepreneurial opportunity: Star Wars. Put something up that could destroy ICBMs, but also anything else already there. The commercial prospects were juicy indeed. Remember space radar chaff, or ‘lighting the jungle’ in Vietnam. Astronomers were outraged. The entire history of low Earth orbit is opportunistic, and vastly more so today. The various militaries cling to their worship of the high ground. The scientific community influences nothing. And the public only cares about GPS reception and really nice real estate photos. Just forget about it. We either manage to end civilization, and have no further use, or continue on to the point some Hoover invents a really good vacuum cleaner.

Yousaf Butt is complaining about how rapid near-earth commercial satellite deployment is threatening the long-term viability of the international space orbital environment. His solution is to streamline launch regulations in order to facilitate a more rapid deployment of near-earth anthropogenic space objects. Does anyone else see a contradiction here? There's also subtle whiff a foreign threat and a vague hint at closing the space commons. The Kessler effect is a real threat to space operations. However, Butt appears to be selling a false agenda.

Space. The new frontier. For our garbage. A one stop shop for commercial space regulation is a good idea IF AND ONLY IF it has "stringent" teeth and is not a simply a push over in the interest of short term profiteers who will cut any and all corners they can to maximize their earthly profits. Pence's version of regulations is that there be no regulations, except there be a prayer, with a government agency ensuring there are no regulations. Bottom-line - all satellites should have an end of service capability to descend out of orbit and burn up in the atmosphere or fly out to an extremely high less congested garbage-orbit that even allows it to slowly escape its tie from Earth's pull. More expensive, but a heck of a lot cheaper than billion dollar investments in space getting trashed before their time by other garbage. Humans should learn to clean up after themselves.

Thanks Elon Musk for adding another piece of scrap to the orbital heap.

Let them smash into and destroy each other. Whatever business-owned satellites exist in space aren't there for the good of humanity.

Should immediately form a global task force of progressive big-city mayors, to propose congestion-pricing fixes... Since these folks like to travel extensively on our dime, get SpaceX to put them into orbit (business class, of course) - for a decade or so - so they can see things first-hand... Spouses and security sergeants too...

Two analogies. 1) Roads. Where multiple moving vehicles share the road, we create rules for all to obey. Those include speed limits, lane markers, turning rules, and signals. 2) As biologist Garett Hardin noted in his "Tragedy of the Commons", any resource, whose benefit is available to all but whose maintenance cost is paid for by few or none, is eventually destroyed. (The original "commons" was an English village's common green, available for grazing to all sheep farmers who lacked their own land. Overgrazing occurred relatively quickly and rendered the "green" not green, as well as useless for grazing.)

Trump has this under control. SpaceForce.

Avoiding collisions in outer space (at distances close enough to 'suffer' Earth's gravity, is, of course, an excellent idea. But without assigning precise distances available and yet not in use, it is for nigh. Can you imagine if radio and TV transmissions on Earth didn't have specifically assigned wavelengths so not to mutually interfere 'a la Babel Tower'? And further, we need a system before launch to recover all the vehicles we send to outer space...once they are done with their useful life...and considered garbage only good enough to hit, or be hit, by others. Just wondering if, out of bad luck (i.e. without malicious intent), one such object fro one country hits one from another 'power', may give rise to suspicion, even an aggressive response, perfectly preventable if we are smart enough to foresee it's potential...and do what's prudent to begin with).

While space-time is limitless as far as we are concerned there is a finite volume of it within proximity to our planet - thus introducing the tragedy or theory of the commons into space. For those who believe in capitalism and profit the only way to regulate the satellites is if there is a cost associated with their operation requiring that owners have to pay for the space they use while in orbit - just as companies do in the US for the electromagnetic spectrum they use. Obviously it would have to be an international body who grants permission and to whom the payments are owed. Such cost which would address the "tragedy of the commons" issues and provide funding for tracking, controlling, possible future clean up operations.

It would seem a reasonable prediction is that it shall not be long before low earth orbit becomes unusable. Hopefully the congestion and pollution would not become so severe that in would be unreliable to launch vehicles through this zone to areas beyond. We cannot help ourselves.

More government oversight, not less. Regulations protect us, and reign in the worst impulses of corporations and legislators.

It is a truism in environmental studies that the harsher an environment, the more fragile it is. Space is the harshest environment we know. A paint chip traveling at 18,000 mph can leave a crater in a piece of metal, traveling in the opposite direction at another 18,000 mph. The upcoming tragedy of the commons due to unregulated and uncoordinated space use by private corporations competing with one another will be horrific. Murphy's Law reigns (just ask Uber, whose self-driving car just killed a pedestrian). Rings of debris from collisions, circling the Earth will end up destroying that pristine environment, and making it all but unusable for anyone. Like everything else, once a certain density level of abuse is passed, a phase change occurs and the place is ruined. The harsher the environment, the longer it takes for nature to recover.

Whatever you do keep Uber away from satellites...

Just to make clear some of the glaring and unresolved problems : There is no assurance that satellites actually reach their intended orbits when launched - any number of things can go wrong, many cannot be corrected. There is no such thing as a stable satellite orbit - constant corrections are required. Satellite orbits decay and the capacity to correct also degrades over time. That means thousands of falling objects. Space weather damages satellite components in unpredictable ways - sometimes rendering them uncontrollable and unpredictable. Space weather alters orbits in unpredictable ways. Any civilization that hopes to sustainably use its extra-planetary environment has to demonstrate it has the maturity to responsibly and safety develop this capacity. The current approach makes us all look like idiots who haven't got a clue about what we are doing - led by rich jerks putting their egos first, expecting everyone else to clean up their messes.

This is not a job for any one country. There needs to be an international body (under UN auspices) with enforcement powers to regulate all orbital traffic.

A nation could build a satellite with any purpose any call it a weather satt.Yes there are so many satts in orbit that there's a concern there will be a cascade of collisions rendering some orbits useless

you can start talking regulating space when you start properly regulating guns It's not your space.

Get the Private Sector out of Outer Space. Air, Water, Soil----They have polluted everything they have touched on Earth. Enforce the Outer Space Treaty. Elon Musk's Tesla is just another trashy publicity stunt. NASA has a responsibility to remove the Tesla from Outer Space and Musk should pay the costs after he is released from jail.

All i can add to this article is, if your looking for good traffic control in space, "do not" use Atlanta's Department of Transportation.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist*, but that's just peanuts to space." Douglas Adams Jokes aside, is there any information on just how dangerous (or not) some of these mega-constellations will make "Space"? I am referring mostly to Space-X's proposed low earth orbit proposed 4000+ satellite network. I know that's a lot of satellites but in a volume of hundreds of millions of cubic kilometers, is it really something to worry about? Because they are in LEO and will presumably not last long (see below) maybe this detracts from the very real problem of "space junk". Also, is there a requirement whereby these satellites will "automatically" (by drag inducing mechanisms or active propulsion) de-orbit after a few years? (That's the good thing about LEO, hopefully the satellites won't last too long, years or decades not centuries or longer). Perhaps they need active propulsion to STAY in orbit so when they run out of fuel, down they come (and they are so light and small they won't be a threat to anyone on the ground). *By the way, "chemist" in England means pharmacist. Too bad for those thinking they could go down to the corner and get various exotic compounds like lab quality NaCl. :)

Trump could order soldiers of his newly-envisioned "Space Force" to take control of space and make it great again.

Ah, so Pence believes a U.S. National Space Council should be the international “one stop shop” for orbital real estate allocation. Silly me, I thought imperialism was limited to two dimensions.

Hey, as long as we can blast Donald Trump into space as our first senior citizen civilian astronaut, (because he'll be the best, world class), I'm all for the privatization of outer space. I'll even pay to put TRUMP in high, big bold beautiful gold letters, gorgeous, on the International Space Station just for him. And why not? He's in outstanding health. Great mind. Our own surgeon general says so. Donald, your rocket is ready....

If Elon Musk's Tesla runs me over while I'm space walking, will my survivors be able to collect from him for a hit and run.

We just take too much for granted. Will a launch put the payload in its proper orbit? If not is the payload maneuverable? Do we have ( as a global agency ) inspection rights as to what is put up in orbit? Have rogue nations jeopardized the functions of communication satellites. Are satellites weaponized? Too many questions and contingencies yet to be answered.

The first profitable "business" in space will be a space junk harvesting business. It'll be doubly profitable because it can act as both the seller of collected junk, but as well be contracted by governments to remove said junk to make way for more junk. That's a lot of technology and rare metals. Just low hanging fruit ripe for the plucking. Not to mention Elon Musks car. Space Salvage.

A commercial venture has no business launching rockets if it cannot schedule these six months in advance and obtain clearance. This impatience with appropriate and essential regulatory frameworks is a clear sign of immaturity and a glaring red flag. There is no place for cowboy capitalism in the space sector. Any fool can launch a rocket - what exactly are we racing to accomplish? We have air traffic control systems for a reason. Despite decades of investment in these systems, near-misses are a regular and increasingly common occurrence - almost weekly events in Indian airspace. Yet ISRO is launching rockets with 100+ satellite payloads. Let's review our record of recent scientific and technological achievements : In a matter of decades, we have degraded one-third of our arable land and wiped out half our animal populations. We are rapidly poisoning our atmosphere and destabilising our climate. We have already permanently and irreversibly trashed the oceans with plastic debris. With no possibility of cleaning up this mess, we can only wait and watch the cascading destruction unfold in the coming decades. We have demonstrated absolutely no capacity to learn from our mistakes. We are too busy staring up at the skies while our planet collapses under our feet. Now we are on the brink of trashing our final frontier - and there is no evidence to suggest we will not do otherwise. This so-called space race promises to be yet another regulatory race to the bottom.

Frankly, under our current system I don’t believe that it’s possible to avoid collisions in outer space. The U.S. Congress has now fostered such spleen-induced faction for so long that the sheer FORCE of the collisions has been the proximate cause of its emptiness of useful action: the collisions are SO energetic that they don’t even leave debris. And we’re soon to entertain yet another election that could introduce a largely new set of orbiting bodies, all of them with this insurmountable compulsion to collide. The problem is elections. If people served until they died, sooner or later they’d become sick of the pointless collisions and seek SOME common ground; and it might then only be Italy and Israel that needed to concern themselves with avoiding collisions in outer space.

I completely agree that we need to better regulate satellite launches and improve collision avoidance technologies and rules. Without agreement across the industry and the world, it is possible that certain orbits may become unusable due to a build up debris. At the same time, I don't want regulation to stifle the advances in small satellite technology. Just recently SSL and NuvaWurks revealed that they launched a small spacecraft from the HispaSat satellite launched just a few months ago. Although classified, their payload is likely similar in size to SpaceBee's based on published information. Why should a classified R&D satellite be permitted to launch at that size, but SpaceBee's is too small to track to be launched? Additional regulation needs to be passed, but it must be done fairly across research, commercial, and military space sectors. I worry that large companies may attempt to stifle new growth and innovation in this industry if given the chance. This must be an international effort if we are to develop sustainable and lasting policy that will allow access to space for all uses and persons.