Why isn’t the free market capable of doing this? Seems odd to spend money just to spend money. There’s plenty of incentive for other people to be doing this already…
I feel like this is like "free market should build roads thing" we fund roads so everyone has access and goods can move freely / more economic activity can take place without problems.
What would the free market solution be here? Someone builds all the infrastructure to track all the satellites, and maybe more than one (if not you have a monopoly) person does it. Then they charge for it?
But someone doesn't use it an now we have more space junk ...
If anything a government organizing this and everyone utilizing it seems like it makes for more efficient / lower risk situation with satellites. Everyone just gets on with more important business.
Usually I’d agree with you on this type of thing, but in this case I think the insurance industry could and should be picking this up.
They’re the bag holder here, and this system could be built for a marginal hit to their bottom line in exchange for a huge amount of de-risking across their entire supply chain.
Except they won’t, because current business is about short-term gains at the expense of long-term sustainability. Companies cannot be trusted to act in their own best interests in the long term, and they’ll just as soon exit an unprofitable market today than invest into making it profitable tomorrow.
I don't think the insurance industry is all that interested providing services or enhancing commerce. They'd have some very mixed motivations all at once if they tried doing this. Including anything technical.
Side story regarding roads: I was recently in Shelter Cove, CA and was thinking that the is road probably exceeds the entire economic value of the town… Why is this road even here? It turns out, they used to harvest tan oak bark for the tannins to tan leather in the late 1800s which was a huge industry back then. Lots of logging roads out there since then… Free markets do build a lot of roads!
Insurance companies have the right incentive but they don’t need to be the ones building it. Safer cars get cheaper insurance, so there’s clear market pressure there without insurance companies having to build their own cars…
Pollution, kinds that suffer the “tragedy of the common”, are a good example where regulation is necessary to prevent a race to the bottom. But that’s a pretty simple and straightforward thing to democratically vote on without government spending.
I think the solution is fairly simple: private companies build these capabilities and offer them as a service. The idea that there won’t be a marketplace for this service seems misguided too. Adversarial militaries will want their own systems, likely contracted out to private companies, which will likely offer civilian use around the world…
The free market is famously unable to solve problems of diffuse risk and responsibility: air pollution, sea piracy, and in this case -- satellite collision avoidance.
This is a good argument for passing a one-page bill which clarifies "if your sat leaves its assigned orbit, you're responsible for the resulting damages". It's a poor argument for spending $50 million dollars per year.
Right, there's no way such simplicity could ever be gamed in the legal system! We could also eliminate crime with a simple law that forbids committing it!
Bankrupt companies leave no assets. Same problem as wildcat oil wells.
So now what? Do you try to make every company in the world with a sat to post a damages bond? Held by who? The UN? Adjudicated by which courts? This is naive.
Collective action problems are real, and this is one of them.
The sleazy (edited - shouldn't call this standard) playbook for old oil wells is for the operators to sell them to a shadier operator company and transfer the risk. The shady firm then siphons the money out and declares bankruptcy.
The standard cycle is that they pump while the money is good. Then when commodity prices crash, those shell companies are insolvent. Industry lobbies for easements on their cash reserves as a favour during the "temporary downturn". The shady guys just walk away with their pockets stuffed full of money, and the regulator is left holding the bag.
Most operators are responsible, and decommission the wells. But the industry has to maintain a whole insurance policy for "orphan wells", and it is always under-funded. Alberta alone is going eat a couple of billion in orphan cleanup.
This process only gets harder when the satellite is "owned" by a shell-company domiciled in Mauritius.
The actual solution is a series of international treaties. The USA government has signed a global promise that they are directly liable for any object launched by any actor in the USA . All treaty signatories are on the same hook. The government in turn then has to track them all, else how do they manage their liability?
How could a private company possibly play this role in a global treaty process? Over decades?
Handing a natural monopoly to corporate America is a very extremely bad idea. Allowing bean counters to control what could eventually disrupt global communications and a huge military advantage is as bad an idea as allowing an unstable billionaire to control a significant portion of your future space program.
