[bt3]

Honest question, but how do we as a society culturally align on who has the right to space in low Earth orbit?

I understand there are treaties that prevent ownership of space in general, but it seems like at some point you could reach such density of satellites that at best, it impairs function, and at worst creates potential collisions.

[ls612]

It's gonna be a long while until we reach that point. For comparison, there are roughly 10000 airplanes in the air at any given time in a 5 mile band above the surface and the skies are pretty clear outside of some congested airports. In orbit you have the advantage of 3D, where satellites can be in a band a few hundred miles thick. Unless someone goes and intentionally creates vast quantities of uncontrolled space junk I think LEO won't have too many issues.

[panick21_]

1. Governments sit together in a room and design rules. This isn't happening and isn't happening anytime soon.

2. Common sense, first come first serve with big organisation (SpaceX, Amazon, China) communicating directly.

[lxgr]

> 1. Governments sit together in a room and design rules. This isn't happening and isn't happening anytime soon.

Huh? The ITU has been assigning slots in GEO for decades. There's defined minimum distances based on the application parameters (the more directed the ground-side antennas are, the less separation you need to hit a particular signal-to-interference target) etc.

While there are currently no physical "slots" in LEO to my knowledge, the frequency assignments used by LEO constellations are absolutely coordinated by the ITU, and implemented by participating countries, as well.

[panick21_]

I was talking more about further iteration of things like the Outer Space Treaty. There is currently very little chance that this will be evolved to systemically handle things like space junk and so on.

The Artemis Accords are the closes, but that's sign up based, much more coalition building then global cooperation.