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

LEO satellites are the size of a car and are spaced apart by the size of a state. They also all are in slowly decaying orbits and will fall out of the sky on their own accord in 10 years or less (they are designed with intentional structural weak points to break apart and burn up on entry). The concerns you have are valid and very real, and shared by the people designing these things.

This is on a similar scale to complaining about there being too many tennis balls on the surface of the earth.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

There is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.

In practice the lower cost of access to space had made it viable to star requiring people to at least deorbit their upper stages, something that was long a no-go, with the excuse being that the extra fuel and redundancy would eat too much into the payload mass.

Nowadays it is generally frowned upon if you leave upper stages in orbit or if your satellite fragment spontaneously. There are of course exceptions (like some chinese launches leaving massive core stages in orbit that ten randomly fall back a couple months later) but AFAIK the situations seems to be actually improving due to the added robustness, that was only made possible by cheaper access to space.

Oh great the NIMBYs are coming for space now.

It's already a massive grid of moving dots. You can see it from the ground in certain dark-enough areas, but in order to see it in space you have to get outside LEO, like Artemis did. They don't have lights but they are shiny and they catch the sun, making them easily visible from certain angles, which the Artemis photos illustrated.

A major plot point in the Red Dwarf books is about Coca-Cola sending a fleet of space ships out to blow up stars so they can spell "Enjoy Coca-Cola" in the sky.

One of those ships crashes and the boys from the Dwarf find the service mechanoid, which is how they get Kryten.

On the positive side, clearing out all this space junk could end up being a meaningful contributor to global GDP. See also Planetes [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

Not a grid of dots, a ring! https://earthsky.org/human-world/kessler-syndrome-colliding-...

It's a tragedy of the commons situation. And given how well we are able to regulate those kind of situations globally, I'm rooting for the ring.

Satellite broadband stonks in shambles after the inevitable Kessler syndrome

https://satellitemap.space

Dark night skies will probably be one of the main selling points for the off world colonies. I can see the Bladerunner-esque ads now.

Junk yes, but think of the new science and industry it will enable as well. Microgravity experiments, new space stations, space tourism, new types of manufacturing in space, asteroid mining. Any technology is a double edged sword, but the benefits surely outweigh the drawbacks here.

Incredible how the first instinct is just to complain about progress these days. The degrowth mindset is really taking hold.

There is a huge amount of "space" available even in low orbital shells. Which also naturally decay.

It’s already starting to be like that. If you get far enough out into the bush away from light pollution and watch the stars for a bit, you can see the grid of satellites orbiting. It’s kind of cool but also kind of depressing.

>but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. People are studying this and hopefully raising appropriate alarms

The number of satellites required to create a measurable number of particles in the planet's atmosphere would be impossibly large. How much mass to orbit do you think is required to create a 1 PPM increase in earth's atmosphere of these "micro particles"?

I find it extremely disheartening how much anti-technology, anti-science, and anti-progress sentiment I read about lately.

What does Tesla have to do with Starlink or launch services?

It was always an American company. In order to launch rockets from countries in the US sphere of influence (even from NZ), companies must obtain an FAA license.

Rocket technology itself is so intensely regulated by US export control laws that it’s practically impossible to develop an orbital launch vehicle without being a US- or Europe-registered company.

It is a real shame. It also looks like a lot of engineering work is shifting away from NZ — Auckland seems to be focusing more on operations and space systems, and the launch stuff is moving to the US with Neutron.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab#United_States_move_...

Needs access to American capital markets, contracts, governance structures, and jurisdiction (applicable law).

SpaceX previously said that are not allowed to hire foreign nationals generally.

So guess NASA told Rocket that if they want American contracts, they need to move?

https://qz.com/794101/elon-musk-explains-why-he-doesnt-hire-...

at least it's still got a bunch of Kiwi engineers building the Rutherford engine.

It sure doesn't help that New Zealand's housing market is one of the most unaffordable in the world.

Capital probably, market access. It is pretty hard to raise capital for high risk ventures like that everywhere in the world other than the US.

same thing that always happens to companies, money

Iridum gains 23 launches per year with 100% success rate in the past 12 months, a satellite manufacturing pipeline with 6 satellites produced and launched, and a cost-to-orbit of $25K/kg operational (with an in-development design targetting $4K/kg).

They are late compared to SpaceX, to be sure: 150 launches per year, 2400 satellites manufactured per year, $3K/kg operational with F9, target $200/kg in development with Starship.

> Rocket Lab has secured commitments for a $3.6 billion bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo to fund the cash portion of the acquisition.

Given the timing, this seems like a risky move as they'll be issuing debt in mid-2027 to refinance the bridge, at a time the market could be saturated / corrected.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/rocket-lab-bu...

And access to a customer base. A lot easier to sell them new services if they already have a big contract with you

A profitable satellite company with a lot of debt and satellites that target the previous model of bespoke terminals when the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

The spectrum is the big thing. If they wanted a revenue stream they could just buy bonds.

I can't believe I bought a few shares of IRDM with a few hundred bucks in my trading account. Primarily because it was a RKLB adjacent company with decent fundamentals whos stock price wasn't scraping the sky.

I don't know how to feel about this acquisition though. Never thought IRDM would've been a bad investment.

> But this is a bad investment

Brother, share with us a sentence or two of why you think so

Uncertain what Iridium global RF band allocation holdings were worth.

If it is still pole-to-pole global monolithic coverage, than hardware/legacy-protocols are of secondary interest. Modern SDR transceivers with proper RF beam-steering front-ends could retrofit the business while slowly phasing out legacy hardware.

But I do agree, Iridium was too pricey for most consumer product markets, and there were several other satellite broadband services.

Additionally, Starlink Direct to Cell (VoLTE) service now leverages global cellphone client infrastructure. It would be extremely foolish to compete with something proprietary. =3

Sailors may be a small and dwindling community, but this is our core use case. When you are sailing offshore you need to download weather predictions so that you can chart your course to catch favorable winds. My experience with Iridium is that you open a targeted set of ports for the modem to feed your phone via, and then you don't have to think about it again. 100+ nautical miles offshore and it just works.

It’s not about Iridium. It’s about Iridium’s customers and partnerships. RocketLab hopes to launch their own satellites presumably and then can sell significantly improved services to them, without having to build a customer base from scratch.

AFAIK Iridium is part of some important airliner navigation systems and standards - while a niche, it can still be very lucrative business. and I would not be surprised if it was embedded like this into various other systems that are less cost sensitive.

> How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

Militaries generally find this capability pretty relevant, among others, and they have deep pockets. They were the ones to bail out Iridium the first time around, after all.

You realize they have a new network of satellites, right? It works much better than the old version with the 90s tech.

A lot of remote IOT devices use Iridium, as well as the US government or DoD.

Starlink Direct to Cell (VoLTE) service now leverages global cellphone client infrastructure. It would be extremely foolish to compete with something proprietary. =3

RocketLab market cap is 57b.

Iridium market cap was 5.5b and this transaction values it at 8b.

Look at GameStop’s quixotic attempt to acquire eBay. Which is actually not impossible.

Remember when NeXT acquired Apple for negative 400 million?

Rocket Lab's market cap is 57B and are buying Iridium for 8B. I'm assuming you're implying some other measure of worth, but it's not that crazy based on stock price.

Dell bought EMC for 67b when they were worth 24b

This is one of those times you actually get to use "leverage" as a verb without sounding turbo cringe: a leveraged buyout is an acquisition with borrowed money; the hope is that you will be able to pay back the debt with the money you make off the acquired assets. Doesn't always pan out but sometimes it does.

That's this thing called credit.

People do this all the time, that's how they buy their first house (or at least used to...). Your net worth is basically zero beyond what you saved for the down payment, but the bank advances you the money to buy the house because it believes your future income streams will allow you to pay the principal plus an interest.