I wouldn't be surprised if a few of those satellites had nuclear weapons inside (or maybe that's just me being paranoid.) Still, having satellites that can take out other satellites during a conflict is definitely a possibility. Which brings me back to my original concern: space junk. The last thing we need is a graveyard of satellites floating above our heads.

It's true that when things get really hairy international law tends to fall by the wayside, eg countries leaving the Land Mine Ban Treaty now that it seems possible they may actually have to deal with a foreign invader on their soil. But they can still be effective at regulating states' behaviour in more peaceful times, which is still useful.

But it does require the major powers to be willing (i) to talk to each other, and (ii) to think about the world beyond their own borders, which means it's unlikely to happen given the current leadership in certain of the big space-going nations.

And this is why we cannot have nice things

I will; when I am elected God-Emperor, I will set up a global defense network that will shoot down any unauthorised launches. I will also build a space palace, because I can.

Only half-joking; space will be regulated when one force becomes dominant and individual countries' rights are taken away, OR when the majority of countries, but specifically the biggest and most powerful ones, get to an agreement - but given the significant differences between e.g. the US, China, India and Russia, that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. So at the moment, a globally dominant world power setting the rules will be the likely candidate.

But first, there needs to be a tipping point of sorts, a line that is crossed. That'll either be space-based weapons or missile defense systems, or simply being out-competed. It'll be at least another decade plus billions of investments before any other nation or company can start to compete with SpaceX's launch capacity, and they haven't stopped yet; if Spaceship becomes viable they and the US will have a huge lead, and the launch capability to set up a global missile detection / defense / space offense network.

If someone wants to launch satellites with a radio violating every ITU regulation there is, unless someone is going to knock on their door with a gun, it doesn't mean squat. The buck stops at your nation's capital - if they're okay with what you're doing, you can do it. Everything else is just diplomatic window dressing and doesn't really mean anything at the end of the day.

We used to have to leave a lot of space between satellites because their orbits varied unpredictably, but we've gotten better at packing them.

Someday we'll talk about the days of 5000 satellites like we talk about when computers had 4096 bytes of RAM, and it will be fine.

I don't agree. Kessler syndrome is another M.A.D. scenario. Nobody would want it to poison the well for everyone incl. themselves.

It's completely incapable of "permanently blocking access to space". What it's capable of is "shit up specific orbit groups so that you can't loiter in them for years unless you accept a significant collision risk".

Notably, the low end of LEO is exempt, because the atmosphere just eats space debris there. And things like missions to Moon or Mars are largely unaffected - because they have no reason to spend years in affected orbits.

That's a very ahistoric narrative. There's been *zero* regulation around space debris in either the US or Europe, for almost the entire space era up until now—most of it isn't in effect yet. Far from being "strictly regulated", US space operates recklessly with regards to space debris. One ongoing example: spent (ULA) Centaur upper stages have exploded in orbit in four separate incidents since 2018, due to ULA's negligence in correctly passivating/deenergizing them. Which they were never obligated to do anyway—not by regulation,

https://spacenews.com/faa-to-complete-orbital-debris-upper-s... ("FAA to complete orbital debris upper stage regulations in 2025")

The reality is that space debris is a less consequential problem than you'd get from reading HN; the early players in space could, and did, get away with being extraordinarily negligent.

It can be completely irrelevant, or it can be something that must be regulated ASAP. Nobody has any idea.

(Well, we have an upper bond in that current numbers are still not an immediate problem.)

"A 1 kg object impacting at 10 km/s, for example, is probably capable of catastrophically breaking up a 1,000 kg spacecraft if it strikes a high-density element in the spacecraft. In such a breakup, numerous fragments larger than 1 kg would be created." https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/library/a-technical-asses...

For example all the GEO satellites are positioned along a 1D line.

To give one further perspective example here: a single large bulk container ship can carry up to 8,500 car-sized units.

This means that even if every single one of the maybe 15,000 satellites in orbit were the size of a car (most of them are much smaller actually), all together, they'd fill no more than the storage spaces of two bulk container ships with lots of room to spare at that.

This, spread over a multi-layered area as vast as our orbital space, means that even with their constantly moving at incredible speeds, and all the junk out there scattered between the satellites themselves, there's an enormous amount of emptiness between it all mitigating against impacts being very likely or frequent at all.

After all, of the 8,070 or so Starlink satellites in orbit right now, there's little mention of more than a few having been knocked out by debris in orbit. It seems that solar storms are their much bigger worry and cause of mishaps.

As the saying goes, space is huge, sometimes more than our brains can easily comprehend. This applies even in the comparatively tiny orbital regions of it that we use daily.