There's a 10% chance that someone on Earth will die from falling space debris in the next 10 years - by AndyTomaswick
Currently, there is no regulatory requirement on how to dispose of the non-reusable rocket stages that provide the launch capabilities to the myriad companies and nations that want to get to orbit. Some of these components can weigh literal tons and might not entirely break up as they effectively aero brake through the atmosphere.
What’s more – one particular part of the world that is more susceptible to these risks – the “global south.” While most of these nations, which reside below the equator, do not have space-faring capabilities of their own, an unfortunate reality of physics makes them more likely to be affected by it. Rockets’ paths to get themselves into orbit typically put their unrecoverable bits into a position to fall somewhere below the equator.
That sounds like a recipe for international acrimony, yet no polity has yet come forward to develop a framework for handling the regulation of these potentially hazardous pieces of technology. As the UBC team points out, there are systems and technologies in place that can stop this potential loss of life – we just have to be willing to accept the increased cost.
The most obvious of these would be to require controlled reentry from any rocket fairing. With controlled reentry, the dangerous bits of debris can be landed safely over one of the giant bodies of water that populate our planet. Given SpaceX’s success in landing its own booster stages back on a platform, the technology is obviously there to do this. But rocket companies won’t implement such a scheme unless required to by regulatory bodies.
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