[ExI] Fwd: Space governance

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 12:47 AM John Grigg via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> What about space elevators? This is a science fiction trope that has
> always captured my imagination! I have read that we may be about 30 years
> away from materials science giving us what's needed to actually build a
> beanstalk to the stars...
>

The main problem with space elevators appears to be more political than
technological: one would need to forbid any satellites low enough to
potentially crash into it, which is pretty much all non-GEO satellites that
don't have their own engines.  This would include forcibly deorbiting any
satellites whose engines malfunction, or whose controllers won't have it
dodge the elevator for whatever reason - but a bigger problem is that the
vast majority of satellites today don't have their own engines, and would
need to be taken down before a space elevator's first cables could be
safely deployed.

If, say, the space elevator was primarily US-controlled (or allies such as
the EU, UK, or Australia), it is quite possible that Russia or China would
consider the forcible deorbiting of their satellites to be an act of war -
possibly even just the forcible deorbiting of their space junk that is
otherwise of no value.  Consider how the US would likely react - regardless
of which political party was in office - if Russia or China started
deorbiting US satellites, claiming it was a necessary first step toward the
imminent deployment of a space elevator (let alone how Russia or China
might react to the other party deorbiting their satellites under the same
pretext).  There don't seem to be any neutral party capable of deploying a
space elevator any time this century, without enough assistance from one of
those three groups that it would be (correctly) treated as essentially
being the assisting party's space elevator.
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