Amazing how much that one Chinese mess increased the numbers.

Spacecraft were designed to jettison components or were left in orbit after their missions ended because no one felt it was worthwhile to make any effort to consider clean-up as part of the mission profile. And every new collision up there potentially generates clouds of new missiles, the number increasing much faster than orbital decay can remove debris, so new hazards would be created even if we stopped launching now. Equilibrium will never be reached.

The people responsible are precisely those who who are highly trained in the technology and the spacefaring nations and agencies; those who should be most aware of the danger, and who have the most to lose. Its the Tragedy of the Commons, all over again, or the Parable of the Lily Pond. (When the lily pads double in area every day, by the time you realize you have an endangered pond you only have a few days to do anything about it, and its too late or too expensive to take action.)

It’s just easier to do nothing until its too late, and it suddenly becomes to late to do anything. Maybe this is yet another explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Space junk reaching “tipping point,” report warns: http://www.reuters.com

“Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, nations retain ‘jurisdiction and control’ over their spacecraft even when they are inoperable, meaning that a salvage operator wouldn’t be able to take title or claim an award for recovering a defunct craft as is done on earth. Space lawyers (yes, there are space lawyers) have been arguing for years that the proliferation of space junk makes some sort of salvage law necessary, but up to now there has been little progress. The technology for recovering defunct satellites is there, though cleaning up smaller debris fragments would be much, much harder. That’s a reason to try to get a handle on the problem sooner, rather than later. A space salvage law might even give a shot in the arm to commercial space efforts, by providing yet another money-making option.”

The thing that perhaps we really ought to be concerned with is whether the ISS, if evacuated, would be considered abandoned under the laws of salvage, and legitimate pickings for a Chinese prize crew. Or any crew, even one launched by a private corporation.

In a related vein, at what point does the United States give up its ownership share in ISS? I suppose if we keep paying our dues we can keep up the timeshare, but you can see it coming: If we stop participating in the Space Station–if we can’t even show up for work, so to speak–inevitably a budget hawk will demand to know why we’re paying anything at all. Or our long-suffering partners might just ask the same thing.

And as a practical matter, possession is nine tenths of the law, and never more so than when it comes to a state hanging on to extraterritorial property. Once upon a time nations that couldn’t enforce possession of overseas colonies lost them. Now we have to worry about space stations.

At least we’re living in the future…