In 2009 an active American satellite collided with a defunct Russian one at 22,300 miles per hour. The resulting debris field created over 150,000 pieces of space junk that won't decay for a century. Nobody paid for it. Nobody cleaned it up... because nobody had to.That is the tragedy of the commons in orbit, and it is getting worse. Conjunctions, the close-passing events that require satellites to burn fuel to avoid collision, grew from 1.7 million in 2020 to 4 million in 2022. Elon Musk has applied for a licence for a million objects. This episode covers: Kessler syndrome: the tipping point where collisions become unstoppable, and how close we are Why the insurance market is not pricing orbital collision risk Astroscale: the company using magnetic docking to clean up space junk, and the Siberian rocket explosion that nearly ended them Why the economic solution to the tragedy of the commons breaks down completely in orbit NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on SpaceX: "there is only one thing worse than a government monopoly" Whether a mission-driven monopoly plays by different rules-⁠Listen to every podcast⁠Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠Follow us on ⁠X⁠Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Read our ⁠Substack⁠Email: [email protected](00:00) How 150,000 pieces of space junk ended up in orbit and why nobody cleaned them up(06:21) Kessler syndrome explained: the tipping point where collisions become unstoppable(10:57) Why the insurance market is not pricing orbital collision risk(13:50) Government intervention, the Moon Treaty and the five-year deorbit rule(20:26) Active debris removal: magnets, robots and who is building the solutions(22:37) Astroscale: how one company is trying to clean up space junk commercially(24:53) Who pays to clean up orbit when the market has no incentive to(26:26) Is SpaceX a monopoly and does that matter for the space industry(29:08) NASA Administrator: there is only one thing worse than a government monopoly(33:04) Space governance, coordination and whether the tragedy of the commons can be solved in orbit

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.