Back in May I gave a talk on „Sustainable Space“ at the University of Bonn. The recording is now available on Youtube.
Schlagwort: Sustainability
A revised version of my paper „Tackling the Space Debris Problem: Practical Proposals from a Global Commons Perspective“ is now available for free on ResearchGate. Here’s the abstract: The growing amount of space debris raises risks of collision cascades in low-earth orbit which threaten to make orbital bands permanently unusable. But even though this has been known for over four decades, there has been little progress in governing the problem. This paper proceeds from the assumptions that space is a global commons and that calls for a centralized form of management are unlikely to succeed. In line with other recent…
I’m still not convinced that we are seeing clear momentum towards stronger outer space governance. However, there is movement on more specialized issues. Not in a centralized, formal-agreement-at-the-United-Nations manner but in a more polycentric way. I’m referring to two recent announcements regarding space debris mitigation (i.e. preventing new space junk from being created). Industry: The Space Industry Debris Mitigation Recommendations The first are the Space Industry Debris Mitigation Recommendations, published in June 2023 by the World Economic Forum. It is an industry effort, organized by the WEF’s Future of Space Network in collaboration with ESA and signed by 27 aerospace…
Quick reminder: My talk on space sustainability and the governance of space debris and space traffic at CASSIS Bonn is in two weeks. This will be a nice follow-up to the second Schader workshop from March. I’m not sure if the event will be streamed or recorded but if you’re in Bonn, be sure to say hi. All the details: https://www.cassis.uni-bonn.de/de/veranstaltungen/kommende-veranstaltungen/24-mai-2023.
Following the first workshop in our „The New Space Age“ series at the Schader Foundation in January, we (the SichTRaum network, that is) just had our second workshop, this time on space sustainability, a topic that I myself keep coming back to. And despite a mass transit workers‘ strike, we had the best hybrid workshop I can remember. Over at Heise Online, Hans-Arthur Marsiske has again provided a very nice write-up (in German). Our third and final workshop in October will be on visions and utopias, a topic that has come up repeatedly during the first two events already.
I may not be going to outer space, but I will be going to Bonn to talk about outer space, which is pretty great, too. 24 May, to be specific. CASSIS (the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies) at Bonn University is organizing a lecture series called „Reach for the Stars“ and they’ve invited me to come and give a talk about an environmental perspective on outer space. Here’s the pitch: The problem of space debris has been known to experts and politicians for decades. As early as 1978, the dangers of a collision cascade of satellites and…
The „New Space Age“ series continues! On 27 March 2023, the second workshop takes place at the Schader Foundation in Darmstadt. It’s still possible to sign up (apart from the ESOC visit, where the deadline has passed) at https://www.schader-stiftung.de/veranstaltungen/aktuell/artikel/das-neue-weltraumzeitalter-zweiter-workshop. The focus of this workshop moves from issues of space safety and space security to the no less important challenge of space sustainability. Numerous satellites are placed in orbit by public organisations and private companies. Their remnants later orbit the Earth as space debris and endanger other objects or future space stations. At the same time, moons and asteroids are becoming…
I seem to have an unstoppable logorrhea that this blog must satiate now that I’m off Twitter. Don’t get used to it, the posting frequency will certainly drop over time. But right now, I want to try a mixture of open science and personal note-taking. As indicated in yesterday’s post, I participated in a panel discussion on the governance of space debris. From the discussion, I have several thoughts stuck in my head that I want to write down here to get rid of them for the moment while preserving them in some fashion, so I can refer back to…
Space debris is a growing impediment to the sustainable use of low-earth orbit. From a political economy perspective, it is a straightforward problem of managing a common-pool resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction. However, while the problem is well-known, the current system of outer space governance is badly equipped to come up with workable solutions. In a working paper, Luca Wesel and I apply insights from Elinor Ostrom’s work on the commons and polycentric governance to the space debris problem. Being political scientists, we couldn’t help but focus on the political obstacles rather than the technical, economic, and legal ones…