Tragedy of the Commons
Adam Kall, Director of Science
8 minute read
One of the biggest discussion points when it comes to the problem of space debris is the question of who will pay for it. At KMI, we’ve been working hard to be part of an ecosystem that answers this question specifically, but for this column I wanted to focus on how strange it is that the question of who pays for it is even uncertain. Space debris presents a major risk to hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and revenues in space, but no individual company or country has yet stepped up saying they’ll pay for keeping all of space clear. It is worth highlighting that again; companies and countries spend billions of dollars on satellites sent into space, and those satellites perform services that result in billions more paid to companies, and the solution to space debris would cost far less than the profit that is made every year. Yet it seems like no one is paying to fix it. How can this possibly make sense in a rational economy with rational companies? By understanding a concept known as the Tragedy of the Commons, you’ll hopefully see how this is unfortunately a very rational outcome, and what can be done to help the world help itself.
The Tragedy of the Commons is a tale that has played out thousands of times throughout history and across the world, but it was mostly codified in a story about farmers and a public grazing field. Imagine a village that has many businesses that serve the local farmers, and they want to encourage the farmers to come to their village versus the neighboring villages, so the village leaders came up with an idea. They will take the large green space at the center of the village and open it up to the farmers to graze their herds in. They won’t charge for this service, and while the herds may chew the grass down, the village figures this would just keep the lawn tidy. Since all the farmers benefited from this free resource, the village assumed the farmers would be responsible and take care to not over-exploit the resource. Instead, the farmers brought their herds, grazed the greenspace until it was nothing but mud, and went back to their farms. The greenspace suffered from being used freely by everyone, so anyone who tried to be responsible took the brunt of that burden while everyone else didn’t have to, and in the end, those who exploited the resource the fastest won over those who tried to be caretakers, at least until the resource became unusable by anyone.
Yet human civilization is built on these exact situations. From the smallest parks to a nation’s borders, many gatherings of people enjoy a shared resource or benefit. These tend to work due to a variety of reasons and circumstances, one of which can be an authority structure that takes a fee from those who would benefit and uses it to maintain the resource. This works best when the benefit is manmade, like the concept of a national border, and worst when the benefit is naturally present, like fish in the ocean. There are a few extremes of this concept of government regulation that are worth addressing. One is the idea that these common resources should have a fee only for the exact users of the resource and no one else. This tends to come from people who are very self-reliant, and it isn’t hard to see their point. “If I were to put in the extra care every day to not leave the iron on, why should I have to pay for a fire service that is never going to have to put out a fire at my house?” The reality is that I would still be benefiting from the downstream benefits of that fire department since it stops my neighbor’s burning house from setting my house on fire or lowering my property values as the neighborhood fills with burnt-out ruins.
The other extreme is to say that absolutely everything should be a common good so everyone should pay for everything. This also can make sense, as having a universal standard for everything, managed by the government, would certainly eliminate inefficiencies like having to check if someone has health insurance or being considerate about whether a student has a laptop at home. The issue is that many services, like laptop ownership, can and should be highly customizable and not rivalrous. There are many ways to make a laptop, with an emphasis on battery life, graphics, reduced weight, or all the above at an increased cost. It should be up to the individual to decide which laptop they want, or if they even need one to begin with, since the laptop is not actually a shared resource. When a customer decides to buy a laptop, that also does not eliminate the possibility for another customer to get their laptop. The product, in this case, is mass-producible and it is a matter of time before the stock is refilled. There may be some undesirable effects if demand is very high while supply is low, like increased prices, but this just increases the reward for production until the market finds equilibrium, rather than in the case of a Tragedy of the Commons, where the increased demand destroys the source of supply.
If these two extremes are not considered, then what is left is the middle-ground that most functional countries employ in the modern day. Some large and difficult to separate services, like roads, national defense, and environmental protection, are covered by taxes and regulation, while a vast majority of products are handled in the free market. However, many of these well-regulated shared resources only exist because of an extended period of time where the Commons were not protected, and the resulting crisis spurred the governments and countries into action, typically at much greater cost than regulating the resource in the first place would have cost. One prime example is the Grand Banks fishery of the coast of Newfoundland, where cod fish used to spawn in such abundance that for hundreds of years the fisherfolk in the area believed they could continuously catch without impacting it, and they were correct for hundreds of years. However, as is human nature, we continued to increase the technology we used to fish with, and by the 1960’s, humanity was starting to make a dent in the breeding population of cod. This started a race to fish as much as possible, and by the 1990’s the cod population collapsed, taking the entire fishing industry with it. The Canadian government now has extensive regulations in place to try and revitalize the natural resource, but it will take decades for the numbers to ever recover. Again, actions to protect a common good after a crisis take more time and cost than proactive actions to prevent the crisis.
A strikingly similar tale is playing out above our heads right now. For decades humanity has been sending objects into space, but given the vastness of space and the small quantity of launches, it seemed unnecessarily alarmist to suggest space could ever be “filled” with space debris. In the modern-day as launch costs have been reduced tenfold and continue to decrease each year, all that space is rapidly filling up. Since 1957, a little over 12,000 satellites have gone into orbit, but recently plans for mega constellations are being proposed and approved by government agencies to put hundreds of thousands more satellites into space in the next decade. The industry appears to be racing towards the bottom as each satellite occupies an orbit that no other satellite can simultaneously occupy. Even if these companies are good stewards of space, the space debris already up there will continue colliding with other pieces of space debris and generating more pieces that will occupy these orbits. The industry is facing a market force that continuously consumes the limited resource, and many companies are now rationally behaving like they need to get their systems built and launched in the next 30 years before the whole industry collapses.
However, it is not a hopeless situation. At least, not yet. A significant risk of space debris comes from individual rocket bodies fragmenting into thousands of dangerous debris objects through collisions. This happens at an increasing rate each year, but a majority of rocket bodies are still whole, and thus could be dealt with as a single piece. KMI is offering this service of Active Debris Removal, and while this service could also be utilized to remove the thousands of pieces after a collision, it would naturally be thousands of times more cost-effective to deal with the problem today while the rocket body is a single piece. So this Tragedy of the Commons could be avoided if only someone could pay for it.
The clear answer can be the governments of the world, funded by a tax on the companies and services that are sending and operating satellites into space. As each satellite occupies an orbit, it is logical that each satellite carries a fee towards protecting the space. This fee does not need to be exuberant either. According to a 2010 paper by Don Kessler, Nicholas Johnson, J.-C. Liou, and Mark Matney titled “The Kessler Syndrome: Implications to Future Space Operations,” only five rocket bodies need to be removed per year to stabilize the LEO environment. In 2020, ClearSpace was awarded $100 million to remove one piece of debris, so the current estimate is that roughly $500 million would be needed each year to resolve the space debris problem. KMI believes this cost can be dramatically reduced through practice and economies of scale from multiple debris removal missions.
According to data provided by the 18th Space Control Squadron via Space-Track.org, around 1,200 satellites were launched into LEO in 2020. With a per satellite fee of $400,000, that total estimated budget of $500 million could be fully funded. For reference, most satellite missions cost in the range of $10,000,000-$100,000,000, with this cost of continued business constituting 4 - 0.4% of the mission costs. Special exceptions can be given to the small cubesats and similar missions that don’t remain in orbit for long, allowing scientific inquiry and incentivizing responsible re-entry. There are also earlier launched satellites that are currently operating in orbit, occupying the now-limited space, and increasing the chances for fragmentation events. Rationally, these operating objects can also contribute to the cost of keeping debris under control. By including the 4,407 operating satellites at a smaller maintenance fee of 1/25, allowing for the 25-year guideline for recommended re-entry, the fee is lowered for launch and operating, while protecting the crucial space environment. Such a fee system in 2020 would have raised $500 million with $353,786.94 per launch, and $14,151.48 per operating satellite.
As the technology for debris removal is improved, and the number of satellites launched increases, this fee per mission would continue to decrease. In 2021 with approximately 1,650 launches, the fee falls to $268,240.34 per launch, and $10,729.62 per operating satellite to fund $500 million, with further decreases as the problem is controlled and the budget for cleanup can be lowered. This communal action turns a problem that gets worse with increased demand on orbital space into one that becomes easier to solve the more demand there is. By cooperating in protecting the common space, all who benefit from space can continue their operations while working to prevent tragedy in the commons.
Recommended column to read next: Discounting Our Future