r/investing
The Space X IPO, Congressional Failure to Address Orbital Debris and the International Law Polluter Pays Principle
SpaceX IPO carries significant regulatory and liability risks due to orbital debris and lack of international legal frameworks.
- Potential massive future liabilities for cleanup and damages under international space law may fall on the company or taxpayers.
- Lack of current regulation allows externalization of environmental costs, creating unpredictable future compliance risks.
- Orbital congestion and Kessler syndrome threaten the long-term viability and operational safety of satellite constellations.
Here's another reason why the Space X IPO is a huge risk.
The polluter pays principle in international law as set forth in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development “that the polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution”
Both Democratic and Republican Administrations and Congresses have not only failed to address orbital debris, they have explicitly avoided regulating the commercial space industry in order to allow it to avoid external costs of environmental compliance, human spaceflight safety issues, and other international outer space law issues.
Orbital debris and the Kessler syndrome have already made several orbital altitudes virtually useless.
Mega-constellations of satellites like Starlink are a threat to orbits we are only beginning to understand...collissions, interference, obstruction of astronomical observation from earth.
We have limited abillity to identify space debris objects below 10 centimeters. We have limited and only nascent ability to remove space debris from orbit. Such debris can pollute orbits for hundreds or thousands of years.
The Outer Space Treaty, the Registration Convention, and the Liability Convention, all of which the US are a party to, requires the United States to continually supervise the activities of their nationals in outer space, of space objects launched from US territory. It also imposes liability on the US government for damages above thresholds for which those space objects cannot be insured.
In other words, you, the American taxpayers, are on the hook for damages to other countries for space object collisions or debris impacting aircraft in flight, caused by a soon to be trillionaire. More importantly, we may be on the hook, as the launching state for debris events caused by Space X (and Blue Origin) to remediate the space environment and orbits in the future, costing taxpayers to the tune of who knows how many billions.
The Space X IPO is externallizing risk and costs to American taxpayers because Congress and the current and past Administrations refusal to legislatively address and regulate the space environment.
It's not just your retirement accounts that are about to get screwed, you and your kids and their kids and grandkids are going to be paying for space debris remediation tens and hundreds of years from now...
Kessler is irrelevant for the orbits SpaceX utilizes for Starlink. The atmosphere cleans the that orbit in a matter of months/year. Not decades or hundreds/thousands of years.
In fact, SpaceX is being extremely proactive with providing the data for their satellites or other countries in order to mitigate potential collisions. Additionally, SpaceX plans to lower the primary orbit of Starlink fairly significantly for operational reasons (lower latency) but that also helps clean orbital debris.
This post screams of misinformation and trying to make something out of nothing
Software cleaned up images is not the same as an image without interference. But yes Starlink debris is not a problem and there's no reason for them orbit high enough that it takes forever to decay.
Pictures from terrestrial telescopes have tons of software postprocessing done to them for reasons besides Starlink, even the space telescopes and especially if color changes for better general consumption is involved.
Space debris will definitely be an issue in the future. Companies are working on the solutions now / it’s not unsolvable.
New satellites have advanced collision avoidance systems like cars to avoid debris
Only large scale collisions that can be predicted several orbits before they happen can be avoided. Small particles that are either undetectable or only detectable at short distances moving at orbital relative speeds\* give you only fractions of a second to react. This class of debris will always just hit you before you even know what happened.
\* because they were produced by prior collisions resulting in a random distribution of velocity vectors
Sorry that I don’t let emotions get in front of facts.
As a former US fed attorney with a degree in international aviation and outer space law and space and treaty law expert...and who is interviewing with a bilateral commission tomorrow morning that deals explicitly in a treaty between the United States and Canada. Your ignorance is not surprising and is one of the main reasons the United States is currently an international pariah state.
I would expect you to understand... with all of these qualifications... that Kessler syndrome cant happen in LEO where SpaceX operates.
Researchers are already able to detect and track vaporized lithium clouds in the upper atmosphere from these satellites reentering and burning up. That's something that has never existed up there before.
I'm not saying you're wrong or that we shouldn't pay, but there is a 0% chance that Elon or any US based space company pays a dime in space cleanup costs until it actually starts preventing them from launching or debris blows up a few major launchs. Any treaty or convention the US is part of will simply be exited or ignored by the US as soon as it becomes inconvenient to us due to the corrupt president and the idiot republicans will cheer this as some sort of "victory".
Wait are you saying that the debris SpaceX produces in its commercial pursuits would be cleaned up by the U.S. government which will almost certainly contract the cleanup out to SpaceX?
Elon: earth space junk doesn't even matter we're going to mars
I chuckled at OPs post. As if Elon would ever clean up a mess he made, much less the US
It's a start. Turion Space is interesting as well.
Most of the space debris in space were from rocket launches the occurred before space X had a rocket.
FAA had to issue a license to spaceX for starlink constellation of satellites. And as part of that regulation they are required to deorbit there satellites when they are no longer useful . Additionally Space X places these in an unstable orbit. very close to the atmosphere. As a result if these satellites suddenly loose power they will deorbit and burn in the atmosphere within 5 years or less. Space X and derbies the second stage of there rocket or place it in an unstable orbit so that will deorbitin months. whenever possible.