[Centigonal]

Hank Green did a video recently advocating for an "orbit value tax" -- like a Georgist Land Value Tax, but for orbits. This tax would, among other things, help fund orbital cleanup and internalize the externality of polluting orbital shells. It's an idea that deserves more discourse IMO.

Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLjW6zuYmos

[nba456_]

And who does the tax get paid to? Some mythical Global Government that will totally work this time?

[athrowaway3z]

The Dutch figured out how to do collective dike maintenance a millennium ago without inventing mythical super government. Collective rules worked just fine.

I encourage you to reflect on this bias. I suspect you're taking the American state as a template, and extrapolating its incompetence. The history is filled with different ideas - some of them far older than America itself.

Hell, I'd call America a place so naturally rich, it's practically the case study how much dysfunction can be papered over with money instead of statecraft.

[ericmay]

And how did the Dutch collect the toll and who received the tax benefits for it?

I’m interested in understanding your comparison here and how it would be applicable to space and how you envision it working based on your comparison.

[athrowaway3z]

You wish to take up a specific space, and with the right to use it come obligations.

There was no tax or toll to consider.

People naturally self-assembled under the idea that if you benefited, then you had to contribute. The calculation was: how much land did you have, how valuable was it, how much benefit you'd get from some waterworks (it wasnt just dikes but also rerouting rivers etc). Obligations were denominated in labor.

My point is not that this was some perfect idyllic corruption-free scheme - it wasn't - but it was very transparent.

All you should need for a stable system is for the majority of interests to align. One addition you can add is to have the labor be turned against individuals/groups that decide to unalign - i.e. instead of trashing space debris your next labor is to de-orbit a satellite if 1 company decides to try their luck at tyranny over cooperation.

Things hinge on a shared understanding that its always possible to go back to the salted earth solution.

[ericmay]

Ok but that's not what I asked... You're just saying "we should have some system that benefits everyone". Ok sure that sounds nice, but you compared it to a specific framework with an off-hand "we've solved this so long ago" type of comment. Surely if it's so simple and straightforward and the Dutch "already figured it out" you'd have at least some idea of a proposal or implementation details.

How will the toll be collected? Who will collect it? How will it be fairly distributed?

[athrowaway3z]

You're not really good at asking anything. I did not say a system that benefits everyone.

I did not say the dutch solved this exact problem, and my previous response was a best effort after you prompting me because i assume you've just never thought through or dealt with non-mega-government solutions before.

I brought up the comparison because nba456_ 19 was already complaining about a required mythical global government - as if that's relevant for the 50y time frame we're planning for.

I also dont understand why you keep bringing up tax and tolls. I'll try to answer that again in the other comment.

[vasco]

Those parts aren't the hard ones?

You collect waterworks taxes the same way regular taxes are collected in NL. You get a letter with an amount to pay and you pay it. The waterworks is the entity that sends you the letter and manages the application of those taxes. The system that comment described is still in place today and operates in parallel to "regular" government.

[someonebaggy]

What happened if you didn't pay?

[athrowaway3z]

Pay what? Its a 'pure' system where nothing has to be denominated in money but instead we care about effects:

taking-up-orbits, applying-force, and danger-pollution.

The system requires the biggest player calculates the cost of non-compliance being too high either by:

- the scheme triggering a clause where other members start to apply force to their non-sanctioned orbits and trashing their satellites, add in the additional threat of earthly economic sanctions like we do with so many companies.

- the scheme breaking apart and becoming a wild west with _extreme_ danger-pollution.

Clearly, at the moment, the biggest users do not care because the danger is low enough, and they'll try to delay a bit so they get more 'grandfathered' in.

I'm not saying its going to be perfect or fair. I'm arguing its dumb to fear a mythical global government, because that's not required to create stable solutions for these kinds of issues.

[cjblomqvist]

The EU is collecting CO2 taxes (indirectly by giving permits out). That's a good comparison. There're tolls in the making for imports.

[someonebaggy]

That works because every member country agrees to it

[guelo]

Not to mention that this bias is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Thanks to all the ideologues that get elected to government by insiting that government can't work, surprise, surprise, government doesn't work.

[brookst]

How many individual people were involved in collective dike maintenance, so we know the model scales? 100 million? 200 million?

[xmprt]

Do you anticipate 100 million space companies vying for orbit?

[brookst]

I certainly anticipate a billion or more stakeholders on space companies.

Or are you doing the corporations are people thing, so if five people can agree on something in a handshake, ethos-centric deal, then surely five space companies with billions of dollars invested from millions of people should surely be able to act like those original five people?

[gadders]

Yes, that would totally work while countries like China, Russia, North Korea exist. They could all have a group hug and sing Kumbaya straight afterwards.

[asadotzler]

The US and Russia have been sharing the ISS for decades. If you can't get past your xenophobia enough to see that there's massive cooperation between the US and Russia in space and has been for probably longer than you've been alive.

[ralusek]

European statecraft has led to a massive bureaucratic blob whose best and brightest just go to America.

[steveBK123]

My new startup, SPECTRE.

It's a new SaaS play - Satellites As A Service. That is, your satellite gets to stay in orbit as long as you pay me.

Otherwise my satellite killer eats them.

[glitchc]

Extortion is my business

-- Ernst Blofeld

[mukbangpervert]

The video discusses this directly.

[LunaSea]

Any company removing space debris from orbit. Like a carbon capture price to offset your launch.

[pantalaimon]

In low earth orbit, space debris removes itself after a few years

[numpad0]

But that's the problem. The debris disperse whatever heavy metals and compounds into the atmosphere. Removing the debris and taking it somewhere, even just landing them protected in a heat shield, could reduce those vaporizing particles, if those are going to be a problem.

[Sanzig]

Eh... no, not really. At low altitudes (<500 km), sure, but much above 600 km you are starting to look at decades for a passive deorbit depending on solar cycle and ballistic coefficient.

[vasco]

Decades is a few years in a trash conversation. Things stay longer in a regular dump.

[nba456_]

What you're describing is a global government, otherwise that can't be enforced.

[Sanzig]

Not at all, it can be handled via international treaty. Frequency allocations for civilian satellites are already handled this way, a UN body (the ITU Radiocommunication bureau in Geneva) acts as a neutral party that handles satellite spectrum coordination between UN member states.

The ITU has no enforcement power, but fundamentally that doesn't really matter much, since enforcement is handled by the member states. Are there attempts by various member states to skirt around the rules or favour their own national interests? Of course, and sometimes these are successful - but nobody just outright ignores the rules, because they know it very quickly leads to a tragedy of the commons.

Administering an orbital LVT is exactly the kind of thing that could slot cleanly into an expanded ITU mandate. Where the money goes would be up for debate, but I think the cleanest solution would be ITU rebates most of it back to the government of the country that applied for the orbital slot provided that they demonstrate it's going into a space sustainability fund.

Is it perfect? No, but it's based on a rickety-but-mostly-works international model and it doesn't require global government conspiracy theories to come to fruition.

[notahacker]

Also, the number of countries with practical space launch capability is very small. US / China agreement isn't trivial, but if you can get them agreeing to ITU-administered slots, getting ESA, Japan, India, NZ etc is pretty straightforward (and Russia's capacity isn't huge even if they don't want to play ball)

[jqbd]

US can enforce US satellites, no?

[swiftcoder]

Provided they are launched in the US, on a US-owned carrier? Most likely

Can't necessarily stop a multinational firing things to space on Russian/Chinese/ESA launch vehicles

[rvnx]

Maybe but if so, it would mean that US spontaneously would go against one of their main strategic interests for the planet ? Doesn't makes too much sense.

It's like this bicycle meme where the person puts a stick in its wheels.

It's for the same reason that petrol cars are encouraged in the US.

Punishing SpaceX will lead to a bigger financial crisis, an upset Elon Musk who might refuse to fund the next democratic election and dozens of thousands of lost jobs (fortunately they already became millionaire, riding the right rocket) for a problem that most of the rich population doesn't care about.

Because in the city, it's about your petrol car, big trucks, and nobody to see the stars and a bit more pollution doesn't change much at that scale from their eyes.

CFCs (these gazes destroying ozone) were a notable exception, because it would lead to death of everyone (the same way that petrol with lead), except death, universally there was no advantage to defend.

But a space filled with US satellites is a great advantage for the US, since they are the only ones with the capabilities to deploy thousands of them, and it's a big business for military intelligence.

I can imagine the main reason they are going to regulate, is so that older satellite debris don't destroy the new shiny satellites, but beauty of the sky is going to be the very least important factor.

[someonebaggy]

CFCs were solved because we found new chemicals that were more profitable than CFCs. Global warming may eventually be solved because renewable electricity is (already) more profitable than fossil electricity (but only when it's working, which is the major sticking point). In neither case did thinking about the bad things that would happen if we continued along a path actually stop us continuing along that path. It was always about profit.

[NDlurker]

US could sanction countries/corporations/people who don't comply.

[sakjur]

Could the US effectively sanction BRICS these days?

[NDlurker]

Hmm, probably not

[iamtheworstdev]

Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights. I'm sure SpaceX and others will be against this until suddenly, they're not, when they realize they're one of the few that can even afford to pay it.

Like when Amazon finally had warehouses in all fifty states and suddenly quit campaigning against online sales tax.

[Centigonal]

One of the arguments Hank makes in the video is that SpaceX is (via starlink) rapidly occupying large portions of useful LEO shells, which crowds out future competitors or users of that orbit (i.e. you can't put more satellites into the orbit without risking collisions, especially satellites that aren't part of the existing constellation), and that the natural consequence of not regulating orbital space in some way would be to lock in the first movers in an orbital shell as the only organizations that have access to that orbit.

[someonebaggy]

The natural consequence then seems like the competitor might as well launch into that orbit anyway and destroy Starlink?

[harrall]

I 100% agree but Starlink is the only profitable space division of SpaceX.

The truth is diverting money to space exploration is not that popular.

We only got the moon because we were in a battle with the Soviet Union about capitalism vs. communism. It was never about space or science. The instant the Soviet Union collapsed, we reduced NASA’s projects and budgets.

So while I’m not a fan of the circumstances, I need some way for money to go to space exploration and I’m riding this like people rode the Cold War as an excuse to build a moon rocket.

[dreamcompiler]

> The instant the Soviet Union collapsed, we reduced NASA’s projects and budgets.

The instant we beat the Soviet Union to the moon we reduced NASA's projects and budgets. That's why the Space Shuttle was such a ridiculous kludge.

[b112]

Yes, and you're 100% right, but context is needed here for others even if you know this next bit.

The original shuttle designs were much, much better. I remember reading tech specs and looking at schematics in Discover and Popular Science years before the final design. Maybe Omni too.

Then it ended up in committee, politicians got involved, and funding was cut in parallel (even before the wall came down, it was clear the Soviets were done). The design was a shadow of what it could have been.

I remeber being sad as a kid.

Also, my drive down nastologia avenue made me realise, I really miss science magazines. The publishing date of the three I mentioned seemed to be staggered a bit. So I always had a bit of science news, and I really miss the format.

Phones aren't the same, tiny, tablets are unwieldy and smaller than a magazine, they were distraction free, and I really liked it just being all in one package.

I even liked the ads! Typically for some computer peripheral, or a new calculator, or some scientific apparatus. The ad just sat there too, it didn't bounce around or scream at you or cover an article's text.

Or the worst modern scourge, popups while you're reading, I mean !'?"#+#-#/ off I'm reading here!

[ilamont]

There used to be a space science mags for kids.

Odyssey was published by the same person who operated Astronomy magazine, and in my tweens and early teens I gobbled up the stories about the space shuttle and the images coming back from various missions such as Voyager.

I don’t remember if I saw it in the school library and asked my parents to subscribe or they subscribed for me, but it really helped to maintain a lifelong interest in space flight and astronomy (along with whatever science fiction I could get my hands on).

[dreamcompiler]

I only recently got rid of my entire collection of Omni. No room to keep stuff like that any more. But I kept v1i1.

[Dylan16807]

If you don't leave junk it won't cost you much. I really don't see this as gatekeeping.

> one of the few that can even afford to pay it. Like when Amazon finally had warehouses in all fifty states and suddenly quit campaigning against online sales tax.

That's not accurate at all. They could always afford to pay it, and so can other companies. What changed is that they stopped counting as "online sales tax" so they didn't care about those laws anymore.

If they could get out of sale tax, they very much would still want to. If they could get rid of sales tax for everyone, they would be for it. Sales tax isn't benefiting them by acting as a gatekeeping force.

[cbsmith]

Better a financial barrier than a physical one. If satellites and spaceships are literally smashing in to each other, I have a hard time interpreting it as anything other than a regulatory failure.

[treyd]

Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep radio by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap communication. I'm sure RCA and the others will be against this until suddenly, they're not, when they realize they're one of the few that can even afford to pay it.

(RCA is a bad swap-in in this example but I'm struggling to think of an apt analogy for this era.)

[cucumber3732842]

Radio was kind of the original internet. They had to restrict the crap out of it so that some jackoff couldn't just get on the airwaves and interview some random conspiracy theorist who says the government is gearing up to kick the bonus army out of DC.

[mschuster91]

> People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights.

Space flight is a typical "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Like radio waves (especially on HF), space orbits are a finite resource... and not just problematic for other satellites, because ground-based space observation gets more and more impeded by satellites.

[charcircuit]

It may be finite, but satellites are tiny and the earth is huge. We barely cover the Earth's surface where we don't even have to deal with launching it into space.

[Alpha3031]

Things on earth don't move at 8 km/s so understandably less worries about collisions there.

[brookst]

I really don’t see how making people pay for their externalities is “gatekeeping”.

If your business model relies on spewing litter everywhere, complaining about gatekeeping when someone makes you pay to clean it up isn’t even disingenuous, it’s transparently manipulative.

The public is tired of privatized profits, socialized costs. Space seems like a great place to draw that line: if you can’t afford to clean up your mess, you don’t get to make the mess. Sorry.

[stinkbeetle]

The problem is regulations like these rarely "pay for externalities".

They impose compliance costs or costs to skirt the regulations.

CO2 emissions have not been solved despite all the regulations and taxes, quite the opposite they keep increasing and will continue to do so for a long time before even thinking about coming down. In large part because production was moved off shore to countries which have less regulation and higher emission intensity of production, which actually has the opposite effect.

Workers rights were not solved, the abuses were just off-shored to countries that still enslave people and abuse workers and allow child labor.

Tax evasion has not been solved, it's just permitted under complicated legal structures.

All these things are a godsend for bloated multinational corporations who can pay the compliance costs without blinking, and have little to worry about organic competition.

Space regulation and taxes won't solve anything. If the government had any kind of track record you might be a little open minded about it, but at this point the burden of proof would be on the people claiming that this time, taxes won't be used for corruption and graft. If there is money to be had in it, the government will take their cut and in exchange allow multinational corporations to offshore the problem to other countries.

[Teever]

Maybe CO2 emissions haven't been regulated successfully because attempts to regulate the came far too late, and the attempts to regulate similar issues in space are coming right on time?

It's a lot harder to stop a very, very large group of people from doing something that they've been doing for generations. It's much easier to stop a much smaller group of people from starting something new.

[Chu4eeno]

How would starting earlier have stopped industries from outsourcing CO2 emissions to other/exempt countries? If you look at graphs of global emissions it's like they didn't skip a beat once legislation and treaties in the west kicked in.

[Teever]

If we hadn’t designed our economy around carbon emitting processes from the beginning there would be no incentive to continue to do this by exporting industrial capacity to authoritarian states.

But because of that original sin we see exactly what you describe — a system with too much inertia to change easily.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

[Dylan16807]

> CO2 emissions have not been solved despite all the regulations and taxes

All the?

We barely regulate CO2 at all.

If we started charging $100 per ton we'd see some massive changes.

And it's not hard to stop those loopholes.

[stinkbeetle]

> All the?

All the.

> We barely regulate CO2 at all.

Not sure who the "we" is, but many jurisdictions do regulate CO2 heavily. Not only immediate direct taxes, but subsidies to competitors, increased regulatory impositions and effective moratoriums on approvals, sovereign risk factors with many countries legislating and committing to CO2 phase out.

> If we started charging $100 per ton we'd see some massive changes.

Again not sure which we you are talking about, but lots of places have carbon taxes. They do make massive changes when they are priced to do so -- see, the EU. That was the point of my comment. I didn't argue markets don't respond to economic incentives, I clearly was agreeing they do. The effect has not been to solve climate change, it has been to move production offshore to markets that have much higher carbon emission intensity of production!

> And it's not hard to stop those loopholes.

And the fact that these not-hard-to-stop loopholes are not stopped still doesn't make you stop to think? The taxes aren't going to solve problems or pay for externalities, they are funding graft and corruption and stifling competition.

[Teever]

Regulations designed to prevent the rise of negative externalities in a nascent industry is exactly the role of government.

If you don't believe in a role for government in regulating access to space despite (despite it having that role since the development of the technological means to access it) than can you suggest a solution to the negative externalities that we unfolding this very moment?

[nearlyepic]

> Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights.

This reads like a parody of libertarians.

[Sanzig]

I mean, presumably, the tax would apply per-spacecraft with a price adjustment for orbit lifetime and how busy a particular orbit is, so a small constellation of 5-10 short lived microsatellites wouldn't have a huge entry barrier.

[xp84]

How else are the entrenched interests who control most of what happens on Earth to guarantee their continued dominance off world? And yes, it’s exactly like the creep of taxation, copyright police[1], and censorship into the Internet when they realized people were going there in part to avoid those.

[1] I’m not really mourning the loss of Napster, but rather rolling my eyes at the way YouTube has made having more than 6 seconds of any song a death sentence for the video, killing fair use dead, since demonetization directly halts distribution of a video.

[nradov]

Do you think Russia will be willing to pay a tax on their new Rassvet constellation?

[ceejayoz]

Seize a few shadow fleet tankers to pay for it.

(This is already happening, today, for other bits of their misbehavior!)

[nradov]

I'm not opposed to seizing shadow fleet vessels operated by Russia (or any vessel sailing without a valid flag registration). But as a practical matter Russia is now legally registering much of the shadow fleet under their own flag, and even giving them armed escorts in some cases. So this is going to make additional seizures more difficult.

[mikepurvis]

Lots of cynical replies here unfortunately, but that proposal is similar to other ones that seek protection for various other natural commons. John Michael Greer discusses a bunch of this in Wealth of Nature [1], basically arguing that merely taxing "externalities" like pollution is insufficient, you need to see the true primary economies that generate the fundamental value of nature as being those that operate without human involvement at all, and also incorporate awareness of the different cycle lengths: a pollinator garden can establish in just a season or two, a forest takes decades, replenishing an aquifer takes centuries to millenia, and putting minerals and oil in the ground, millions of years.

Any human activity which degrades, disrupts, one of these cycles, or consumes an output from it needs to compensate the rest of us accordingly.

Now obviously governance is the tricky piece. The two obvious ones are to give the money back to the taxpayers or put it in a sovereign wealth fund to be invested on their behalf, since at the end of the day, the commons should be the equal entitlement of all citizens.

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11382620-the-wealth-o...

[mr_toad]

Difficult to tax something you don’t have jurisdiction over.