I love when WonkBlog finds out about a topic in a new field (particularly when I've known about it before). It reinforces to me how well they explain complicated things. Space trash is a growing problem. These economists have a solution.
I love when WonkBlog finds out about a topic in a new field (particularly when I've known about it before). It reinforces to me how well they explain complicated things. Space trash is a growing problem. These economists have a solution.
3 comments:
how well they complicated explain things? You make good mouth :-)
(BTW that last part was stolen from Brooklyn-99, which is frankly not too bad a show).
I did some work on the radar which tracks the junk and remember thinking it was a huge task. This launch tax idea seems like it would give a sizable competitive advantage to the established operators disadvantaging both developing countries and new companies. I think a more equitable solution would be charging rent for space occupied. This still raises barrier to entry, but spreads it out a little more. The collected funds could then be used to “evict” the deadbeat space junk that doesn’t pay.
Didn't know you did that, quite cool. On-going rent seems more expensive than a tax, but I suppose either could be more or less and both could be structured as long or short term things.
I'd guess that any satellite anything has huge upfront costs and those players are used to dealing with that in their business plans.
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