Tuesday, October 25, 2022

An interesting discussion of the implications of anarchy in outer space

Nonzero: Is Outer Space the New Wild West? | (Robert Wright & Douglas Ligor)

There are 10s of thousands of chunks of space debris in low earth orbit as the result humankind’s collective excursions into space. Leaving aside the issue of weaponizing these things, they’ve begun to collide occasionally. The problem’s just going to get worse as we put more stuff up there. At 40:45 this discussion has interesting remarks about why there are no treaties regulating space junk.

More generally, the discussion implies the issue of x-risk as nations jockey for control of space.

1:49 How worried should we be about the “Kessler Syndrome”?
7:46 The nightmare scenario for anti-satellite weapons anarchy
13:34 How an attack in space could trigger WWIII
25:13 International law is way behind the curve in outer space
40:45 Why isn’t the grave threat of space anarchy getting attention?
54:10 How the new Cold War makes conflict in space more likely

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