<story><title>Space Debris Has Hit and Damaged the International Space Station</title><url>https://www.sciencealert.com/space-debris-has-damaged-the-international-space-station</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acd</author><text>There is a big BUG in marketing economics that we do not have a price for external Junk&amp;#x2F;Waste. This one organizations junk may be &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; to them, but cost another organization big amounts of work and hassle.&lt;p&gt;Space junk is such an example. After you launch your satellite and it does it work and then becomes obsolete, there is very low to no incentive to remove the waste in a good manner.&lt;p&gt;Nature usually works differently in that there is some kind of waste harvest process that recycles the waste into a renewable process.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>edouard-harris</author><text>&amp;gt; There is a big BUG in marketing economics that we do not have a price for external Junk&amp;#x2F;Waste.&lt;p&gt;This is called a negative externality, and it&amp;#x27;s been understood by economists for about a century. See &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Externality#Negative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Externality#Negative&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons negative externalities persist is that they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;hard&lt;/i&gt; to put a price on. How would you calculate the economic cost of the marginal piece of space junk?&lt;p&gt;In practice governments will have to do their best to impose reasonable frictions, by taxing launches or otherwise regulating them. But I think it&amp;#x27;s more correct to call this a genuinely hard problem in economics, as opposed to a bug.</text></comment>
<story><title>Space Debris Has Hit and Damaged the International Space Station</title><url>https://www.sciencealert.com/space-debris-has-damaged-the-international-space-station</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acd</author><text>There is a big BUG in marketing economics that we do not have a price for external Junk&amp;#x2F;Waste. This one organizations junk may be &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; to them, but cost another organization big amounts of work and hassle.&lt;p&gt;Space junk is such an example. After you launch your satellite and it does it work and then becomes obsolete, there is very low to no incentive to remove the waste in a good manner.&lt;p&gt;Nature usually works differently in that there is some kind of waste harvest process that recycles the waste into a renewable process.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>colechristensen</author><text>These things are managed and approved, end of life is a consideration for approval for us related space launches.</text></comment>