[rwesterdahl]

Right now NO ONE. Crazy right? Well not really. If you forced people (satellite owners) to pay for someone to deorbit their stuff, before an affordable service exists, that'd be a quick way to put a major damper on the booming space economy. It is crucial to develop the technology quickly, and do so with a system that is affordable. Only after this will regulators be willing to move towards enforcing more strict policies for deorbiting your satellite if it dies. Until then, anyone need an orbit modification? :)

[lkbm]

As I understand it, the majority of junk is 1. 480 million copper pins the US military put into orbit[0] and 2. 150k pieces of junk from the Chinese anti-satellite weapon test/demonstration[1].

So if we're going to charge someone for this, first and foremost are the US and Chinese militaries.

Who's going to make them pay up?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

[aikinai]

Thanks for linking to the interesting story, but it doesn’t agree with your comment. Wikipedia says there are only 36 clumps of needles left in orbit.

[gridspy]

*36 known clumps

Individual needles are probably too small for radar to track, but not too small to punch a hole in your vessel.

Fortunately some have re-entered.

[lkbm]

Good catch. I didn't fully reread it before posting. I was also unsure if the individual needles were still around, but the article says they'd have decayed after ~3 years, so it's just those few clumps that are relevant.

[jcun4128]

that is cool "artificial ionosphere"