I understand why the international community doesn’t see it this way because they meld the two together, but I would distinguish between safe space, and safe people on earth. Space governance vs. earth governance
You’ve said that space is a commons, and space law is international treaty—what does a re-entry have to do with this that doesn’t affect space? From my perspective safety of people on earth has nothing much to do with the governance and safety of space, so shouldn’t necessarily be part of the political discussion about responsible space debris.
But 100% I can see how those 2 things get connected politically, like “if you are willing to be loose with your huge space station, why should we pay more to stop our satellites becoming space debris?” Even though one of those things is about Earth governance and the other space.
Ultimately the safety of the space domain and safety on earth from space debris are linked by both overlapping technologies for monitoring and mitigation and the overlapping principle that entities ought to take responsibility for what they put into space. And from that perspective it would be pretty hard to lecture foreign universities on why they should spend a few grand on safely deorbiting their Cubesat to mitigate a very small risk of hitting other satellites whilst being the entity that decided to abdicate responsibility for safely deorbiting the ISS to mitigate a very small risk of hitting a densely populated urban area—to save a lot more money but still only about 4 months of ISS budget.
Ultimately they’re optimising for technological potential rather than saving lives, and the budget for this is far more closely linked to debates like “but we can’t trust the Russians to manage the deorbiting process, can we”, “does it have commercialization potential” and “could it be turned into an ASAT weapon” than “would it save more lives than the debris could possibly threaten if we bought $843m worth of medicine instead?”
Thanks David yes I think I understand this now!
I understand why the international community doesn’t see it this way because they meld the two together, but I would distinguish between safe space, and safe people on earth. Space governance vs. earth governance
You’ve said that space is a commons, and space law is international treaty—what does a re-entry have to do with this that doesn’t affect space? From my perspective safety of people on earth has nothing much to do with the governance and safety of space, so shouldn’t necessarily be part of the political discussion about responsible space debris.
But 100% I can see how those 2 things get connected politically, like “if you are willing to be loose with your huge space station, why should we pay more to stop our satellites becoming space debris?” Even though one of those things is about Earth governance and the other space.
Ultimately the safety of the space domain and safety on earth from space debris are linked by both overlapping technologies for monitoring and mitigation and the overlapping principle that entities ought to take responsibility for what they put into space. And from that perspective it would be pretty hard to lecture foreign universities on why they should spend a few grand on safely deorbiting their Cubesat to mitigate a very small risk of hitting other satellites whilst being the entity that decided to abdicate responsibility for safely deorbiting the ISS to mitigate a very small risk of hitting a densely populated urban area—to save a lot more money but still only about 4 months of ISS budget.
Ultimately they’re optimising for technological potential rather than saving lives, and the budget for this is far more closely linked to debates like “but we can’t trust the Russians to manage the deorbiting process, can we”, “does it have commercialization potential” and “could it be turned into an ASAT weapon” than “would it save more lives than the debris could possibly threaten if we bought $843m worth of medicine instead?”
Thanks David this is excellent. Have added a sentence (crediting you) in the main body which hopefully reflects your point here.