Space is another public commons. I will assume it will follow the same trajectory as other public commons. A few decades of abuse, leading to consequences, leading to regulations. But the regulations won't happen until the consequences happens.

- The electromagnetic spectrum - https://www.britannica.com/topic/radio/The-Golden-Age-of-Ame...

- Low altitude airspace - Part 107 Rule

- Fisheries - UNCLOS

Only the orbits that are more plentiful are free.

The most obvious is that any international body would be easily controlled by the big players, so you'd end up with more centralized control by the same national entities, but now they'd be controlling other countries launches as well.

The other problem is that lately international organizations have a pretty bad track record. Two examples, which I've chosen because they are actually both very important incidents and also squarely in the domain of the respective orgs: WHO with Covid with a mostly useless and visibly politicized reaction; and UN with Gaza, with a large block of Arab voters who are basically stuck at condemning Israel, but systematically refuse to actually step up and help with the problem. Both incidents are literally what those orgs were created to handle, and yet they don't.

Also space launches have a military component, not always public. I doubt many would agree to let an international body poke their nose in that.

The country is the atomic unit of global governance. Everything else is just hand-shake deals and "promises." If your country says you can do something, you can do it.

A 1 unit CubeSat is 10cm³ and max 2kg / unit, occupying a particular location in an LEO orbit at 28,000 km/h / 17,000 mph doesn’t want to be bumping in to anything either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2

https://europeanspaceflight.com/ariane-6-successfully-delive...

Countries like Germany, Spain, France and Italy does have a number of satellites and it doesn't seem to be specified what they are doing. It would be weird if none of those where not military.

https://www.space-track.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Designator

Take in account, that a lot of those are replacement sats for the first generations that they are deorbiting already. Do not quote me on this, but its a insane amount (i though it was around 2k) of the first generation that they are deorbiting. If there is a issue, its not the amount of sats in space, but more the insane amount of deorbiting StarLink is doing.

Starlink wanted to put up insane numbers, but a lot of their fights contain a large percentage of replacement sats.

And they are getting bigger ... v1.5 is like 300kg, the v2.0 mini (ironic as its far from mini compared to its predecessors) are 800kg.

So before StarLink launched 60x v1.5's but now they are doing 21x v2.0 Mini's per launch.

The technology has been improving a lot, allowing for a lot more capacity per satellite. Not sure when they start launching v3's but those have like 3x the capacity for inner connects/ground stations and can go up to 1Gbit speeds (compared to the v2's who are again much more capable then multiple v1.5s).

So what we are seeing is less satellites per launch but more capacity per sat. This year is the last year that they are doing mass 1.5 launches, its all now going to the v2.0 "mini" (so 3x less sats).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4226900/Indi...

Now, all of this is spread over a three-dimensional topography that's much larger than the total surface area of the Earth, and because their orbits are, as mentioned, three-dimensionally occupying various altitudes, the size of the total topography they move through is enormously larger than just one single surface area in square kilometers of a single hypothetical sphere X km above the Earth's surface. In the least case, even if all existing orbital satellites were stationed at the lowest possible orbital altitude, that's still quite a bit bigger than the 509 600 000 square km of the Earth's total surface. (too lazy to calculate the specific increment in this moment)

Across all of that, just 15,000 objects that are individually smaller than your average family sedan.

For comparison, the island of Manhattan has approximately 116,000 buildings crammed into it. If you spread those more or less equi-distantly from each other across the whole of the Earth's surface, water or air, there'd still be a tremendous amount of empty space between them. That's nearly 10 times as many objects individually much larger than any human satellite, across a much smaller surface area than what's occupied by our orbital satellites.

(Yes, I know we also have a shit-load of other inert junk zipping around up there at tens of thousands of KM per hour, but even if that stuff, most of which is very tiny, were included, we're still talking about an enormous amount of empty space between objects)

https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/

This is unimportant, but: a site:nasa.gov search shows all three "HEO" acronyms in common use, there; and even Wikipedia abbreviates it inconsistently across entries[0-2].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Earth_orbit ("A medium Earth orbit (MEO) is an Earth-centered orbit with an altitude above a low Earth orbit (LEO) and below a high Earth orbit (HEO)")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_elliptical_orbit ("A highly elliptical orbit (HEO) is")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Earth_orbit ("In this article, the non-standard abbreviation of HEO is used for high Earth orbit[2]")

[edit]: I overlooked the abbreviation of "geostationary equatorial orbit" for GEO, which brings it up to four different "E's"!

MEO is Medium Earth Orbit

The E is short for the same thing in this case.

GEO for Geostationary and HEO for High-Eccentricity are interesting, though.

It's a genuinely international problem that can hardly be solved by throwing up one's hands and sighing that the oceans are free for everyone and ergo there's nothing that can be done. I believe one could convince a lot of people that there should be limits, I just have to scale up bad behaviors: fishing a species to extinction? pouring toxic waste into the waters? using dynamite for fishing? scraping ocean floors for minerals and turning thriving ecosystems into vast lifeless deserts? huge dragnets that catch and kill everything? Some of these things may not resonate with all people but almost everyone will answer Yes, that should not be allowed, at some point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicatio...

The only reason space has been managed decently well until now is because most of it was done through the US and Europe that have very strict regulations around safety. Don't expect this good behaviour to continue.

1. https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/04/30/station-m...

2. https://www.livescience.com/chinese-rocket-booster-fourth-la...

3. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007-03/chinese-satellite-de...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Then maybe the 4(+) countries that can field anti sat weapons beyond that.

> The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely replace them, the predictable result being a "tragedy" for all.

There is no right of absolute freedom, because at some point that freedom affects other people who also have rights. So we're always limited explicitly and implicitly in what we can do. Free, unfettered access just means taking something away from somebody else.

I'm not sure what the exact number was in 2023, but according to [1] it was 6718 at the end of 2022. With that kind of growth, quoting two year old numbers isn't all that helpful

1: https://blog.ucs.org/syoung/how-many-satellites-are-in-space...

"As of 31 July 2025:

Satellites launched: 9,314

Satellites failed or deorbited: 1,237

Satellites in orbit: 8,096

Satellites working: 8,077

Satellites operational: 7,040"

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel...

All shapes which satisfy {(x,y)| x^2/a^2 + y^2/b^2 = 1} for fixed values of a,b in R are elliptical. Something is either elliptical or not - it's not a matter of degree. A circle is just as elliptical as a more eccentric ellipse in the same way that a square is just as rectangular as a more elongated rectangle.

The easiest alternative to implement is having the satellites in a geostationary orbit so that they are always above a single spot. The altitude necessary for this is higher than 20k miles, and results in very bad ping/latency. Inmarsat is one of these, and I had a chance to use it in the past. It was slow and laggy, as the realities of physics would suggest.

So more satellites means more potential coverage of the globe, or increased capacity over existing coverage regions, or both. It seems very important.

The Indian satellites in the article weighed on average around 6 kilograms. A starlink satellite weighs 227 kg. You can put more telecom equipment in 227 kg than in 6kg. A better metric than #of satellites is probably total mass of satellites, to make broad comparisons more meaningful.

Therefore, they occupy much more volume.

I thought GEO stood for Geostationary Earth Orbit, since a geostationary orbit must be equatorial anyway. But actually "Earth" would also be redundant, since "Geo-" already stands for Earth.

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.

My comment had nothing to do with the theory of commons, only with the implementation. Yes, the better we coordonate the better the overall outcomes, but simply creating rules for the sake of creating rules will just create additional problems. You can't say "a better/new UN will fix Gaza" without understanding why the current one is failing: votes are based on population, there are very large Muslim populations, their political leaders have to play a certain tune or they'll have problems back home etc. It's all a bit more complicated than "let's all get along".

Same with space. Ok, basic rules are nice. At the very least, a norm of not having things go explody in stable orbits would definitely be welcome. Now, problem: how do you create an institution to enforce only the good rules, without scope creep and bureaucracy over 30 years?

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.

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 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.

In the ISS decommission report that evaluated different retirement plans [1] for the ISS, the suggestion to park the ISS in a higher orbit was evaluated but dismissed because raising its orbit out of LEO would increase collision risk to >4 years lifetime, and raising it further requires too much fuel.

ISS is currenrly in the higher end of LEO, meaning most debri decay away slowly. But higher orbits are already hazardous, and our space development is still very small-scale in those orbits. "loiter around for years" is already at 5 years. And that's with a relatively small amount of development and short history. If we want to do space in anther 100 year without inch-thick steel armour on our rockets that leave earth, we need some regulation around this.

1. https://www.nasa.gov/faqs-the-international-space-station-tr...

And, it would be really bad. But to some extent, can you blame them? If they are getting whacked every day by GPS guided bombs or drones, or they are being outsmarted by satellite-gathered intelligence, why should they take it? If we’ve put parts of our weapons in space, we’re the ones weaponizing it, right?

> There's been zero regulation around space debris in either the US or Europe

I present to you Project West Ford [1], and its influence on the original creation of the Outer Space Treaty. Though the wording of the treaty itself makes little mention of space debris explicitly, it's indeed part of the treaty. But the mild wording and weak enforcement are insufficient to deter recklessness.

- Article I – Freedom of Use and Access

- Article IX – Due Regard and International Consultation

- Article VI – International Responsibility

- Article VII – Liability

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford

Companies don't work for the public good, or even their own good, most of the time. Strange that you'd expect that to change.

Things are more civilized in space, maybe in part because of the relatively small number of big players. But at the same time there are tentative signs that we might be in the early stages of Kessler syndrome. It's hard to tell, and by the time we can tell with certainty it might be hard to still act in time

Trains take up a negligible fraction of the mileage of the lines they operate on and rarely cross other lines, but signalling is still critical.

For space, this perceived cost might be higher so, the limited number of parties might be more cautious.

Indeed I'm aware of The Tragedy of Commons, but from my view, space is a bit more nuanced.

Wish we were much more diligent about our planet though. We, humans, pillage it like all resources are infinite. Sad.

To take a slightly different take, Mexico exists as an objective fact. The EU can decide not to recognize Mexico as a country but Mexico continues to exist and faces basically no adverse reaction from this. If the countries that make up the EU decided it was done and stopped acknowledging it, it would cease to exist. It has no population, no military, no land. No means of projecting force. Mexico retains these properties and abilities regardless of any agreements to the contrary, or lack thereof.

I'm not saying international agreements don't exist but that they have no inherent sovereignty because they are by definition but hand-shake agreements between independent sovereign members.

I don't expect companies to change. I expect government to regulate and oversee...

What's stranger is, people calling for deregulation of everything despite knowing how it's gonna end up.

You can also probably have different satellites on different ellipses whose paths intersect with each other, but the timing is such that they never collide.

I suppose it's quite complex in reality!