Megaconstellations May Be Just 2 Days Away From Causing a Kessler Syndrome

This feels like one of those problems we already understand well enough to act on, but keep Postponing because responsibility is diffuse. If companies can afford to launch and operate Megaconstellations, they should also be required to fund end-of-life Deorbiting, active debris removal, and shared cleanup infrastructure. Right now the incentives favor adding objects faster than we remove them. Kessler syndrome isn’t a mystery, it’s a predictable outcome of treating orbit like a free dumping ground. If access to space is a Shared resource, then stewardship has to be part of the Cost of entry.

$100,000 fine, so they saved money not spending several million dollars to recover the satellite. that'll teach em.

Hopefully some space ddr5 lands in my backyard.

Just like with mining, corporations take the profits and leave the cleanup to the tax payers.

It seems unlikely to me that anyone who can afford to put something into orbit cares much about a $150k fine.

The fine has to be more expensive than properly decommissioning the satellite. The companies will always default to the cheaper option.

It's the "yeah, not my problem, the next guy will fix it" situation, but compounded over decades.

In the 1970’s I worked with software engineer who once worked at JPL. His last job at JPL was to create a database to keep track of all the human introduced junk in orbit around the Earth. He told me everyone was ‘shattered’ by the amount of junk actually in orbit then. People knew it was going to be a problem, but were stunned by the amount of junk at that time. Of course this video shows how bad it has gotten since then.

Good thing that world leaders are this total responsible and selfless humble people who will act on this with integrity

there's a billion regulations for any kind of aircraft and seemingly any person with a bit of money can put something into orbit.