The federal government is backing off on rules that would require commercial space companies to clean up after themselves in space. It announced last week that it needs more time to gauge the impact of the law. “FAA intends to review the space launch industry cost inputs and expectations with respect to debris mitigation activities,” the agency said. The rule was first proposed in 2023 by the Biden administration in response to the growing tempo of space launches and would have required the companies to safely deorbit debris, notably the upper stages of rockets used to deploy payloads in orbit, within 25 years of launch. The rulemakers of the time said the various spent pieces of space hardware “pose a significant risk to people on the ground due to their mass and the uncertainty of where they will land.”
According to ProPublica, no one has reportedly been killed or seriously injured by space rubble but there have been some close calls. A boy in China suffered a broken toe from falling space bits and a woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was hit on the shoulder by something from above. A Canadian researcher, whose study determined that there’s almost a 30% chance that someone will be killed by space debris in the next decade, is critical of the decision. “Instead of requiring companies to responsibly dispose of these upper stages, the U.S. has decided to roll the dice on a person or a plane getting hit by falling debris,” said Ewan Wright, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia.
Russ, what about all the junk still orbiting at 17,000 miles an hour?
C’mon Steve, you know nothing is going to happen, at least with the current mis-shod clown car, until Elon loses a rocket or satellite due to space debris.
When that happens, let’s hope it’s debris from one of his own launches. Schadenfreude
I often wonder how Elon transitioned from genius to clown. Oh, wait! I know…
Risk to people and places on the ground is a real but low-probability risk. Far worse, and a near certainty if nothing is done, is the “Kessler syndrome”. This is when one collision leads to scores/hundreds/thousands of fragments, which, in turn, collide with other pieces of junk. Each collision ups the probability of more, leading to a chain-reaction cascade and making Earth orbit unusable. Satellites already have to make course corrections on a routine basis. One study estimates that a 4 day global loss of control communication with them, as could happen in a severe solar storm, would result in exactly this cascade. Fixing it after the fact is impossible, making space unreachable for the next thousand years. And Musk is petitioning the FCC for blanket approval of 3 million more Starlink satellites … .
We wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of corporate profits.
Score another one for Elon
Anyone with real familiarity with current launch providers will be aware that the major launch providers already do this at every opportunity anyway.
The bigger problem is non-US launch providers, which are unaffected whether this legislation passes or not.
Curious: is the plan to wait until debris poses a risk to commercial space companies then ask the American taxpayer to foot the bill for cleanup?