The Kessler Syndrome: Space junk in orbit

I'd really need to see an example where this actually happened, because your pitch in the first paragraph is utterly unconvincing.

The incentives for individual players/nations are still to use earth orbital spaces more - the more each can put up there, the more they reach their goals, and prevent competitors from reaching their goals.

Of course there is the global motivation to use it better in the long term, but this is in conflict with the individual near-term incentives - the entire point of the Tragedy Of The Commons is that everyone DOES see that it is in their interest to preserve it. Yet, before the tipping point, it is ALSO and in the short term MORE advantageous for each player to exploit it for their own advantage.

Russia just demonstrated as much last week. It is totally in their long-term interest to preserve it, and even in their immediate interest to not endanger their cosmonauts or their investment in the ISS. Yet, they went and scattered thousands of projectiles all over the space.

So, the assertion that this is somehow different needs more evidence. AFICT, everyone sees the need, yet everyone is still tossing up more satellites without a plan or agreement to fix it.

Where is the immediate (not long-term) motivation to not use it, and where is evidence that it is being fixed? It is already quite late.

That's one factor, yes. Another is the time horizon for gaining the benefits of using the commons. This is another respect in which the Earth orbital space scenario is very different from fisheries.

When fisheries are overfished, the benefit to the overfishers occurs over a very short time horizon. They have to either eat or sell the fish fairly quickly, before the fish spoil. So as long as they think they can go out and catch enough fish on their next trip, which typically lasts on the order of days, to compensate them for the effort and make their expected profit on top of that, they have a short term incentive to continue to overfish. In short, the time horizon for the short term incentive is on the order of days for overfishing.

A company deciding whether to launch additional satellites has a very different short term time horizon. A satellite launched now will take years to pay back the investment made in it. So the company has to be able to forecast that that satellite will remain in service, and not get impacted by extraneous factors like orbital debris, for a period of years after it is launched. Plus, the company has to invest resources in planning for years before the satellite is even launched. So if the company projects that in, say, ten years, the risk of satellites becoming impacted by orbital debris is unacceptably high, they have an incentive to do something about it because otherwise they will lose the investments they are making now in satellites that will have to deliver them profits in that time frame.

> Russia just demonstrated as much last week

What Russia did last week had nothing to do with short term incentives for private exploitation of Earth orbital space using satellites. Indeed, the main point of their demonstration appears to have been that they can deny the use of Earth orbital space to anyone with anti-satellite missiles if they so desire. If they were to carry out such a threat, it would prevent private companies from exploiting this commons.

E.g., fisherman have massive capital investments in their boats, and also will not make money unless it is long-term sustainable.

There are already the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines," which was put together by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC), and unanimously adopted by the member states of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).

Russia straight up violated them. Yes, this may prevent private companies from using space, but it would also prevent them from doing so, and as a nation-state, they have an even longer term need & incentive.

With all these incentives you outline, major steps should have already been taken by private companies restraining themselves. Can you point to any?

I'd love you to be right, but I don't see how it'll happen.