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.

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.

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

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.

I love how basically every single industry has been developing their own torment nexus for the past several decades because it's really super profitable for like 8 guys. Suddenly, as quick as an elderly person carefully navigating up a stairway, and as unforeseeable as the pain from slapping your own face, now all the practically postmarked side effects of constructing every single torment nexus is about to begin concurrently. To make things better, not only did the 8 guys not plan and prepare for stopping or at least mitigating the torment (because it would have slightly reduced profits) they are continuing to build the torment nexus for continuing profits! We truly live in the bestest of timelines, don't forget to carry around a tape recorder so you can record dramatic diary entries that ultimately culminate towards a climactic death soundbyte for the wasteland survivors of our future.

The fact that this video came out as Spainsat NG-II got hit by debris, and starlink announced retreating half of their fleet into lower orbit so that if they crash, they burn up in months instead of years... Your timing is something else Anton...