Comment by Centigonal
6 hours ago
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
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.
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.
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.
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>that SpaceX is (via starlink) rapidly occupying large portions of
Which is utter bullshit. Quite painful to hear too. LEO is not your average american homeless stolen mart cart. Can we please rise to some more insighful level of discourse?
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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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
And who does the tax get paid to? Some mythical Global Government that will totally work this time?
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.
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.
How many individual people were involved in collective dike maintenance, so we know the model scales? 100 million? 200 million?
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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.
Extortion is my business
-- Ernst Blofeld
The video discusses this directly.
Any company removing space debris from orbit. Like a carbon capture price to offset your launch.
What you're describing is a global government, otherwise that can't be enforced.
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In low earth orbit, space debris removes itself after a few years
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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...
Do you think Russia will be willing to pay a tax on their new Rassvet constellation?
Seize a few shadow fleet tankers to pay for it.
(This is already happening, today, for other bits of their misbehavior!)
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.
> orbit value tax
How about No?