Economics of debris mitigation Sample Clauses

Economics of debris mitigation. ‌ Xxxxxxxxx et al. (2004a) estimate global debris damage and mitigation costs for the coming 100 years under various implementation schedules of debris mitigation guidelines, including deorbiting. Xxxxxxxx et al. (2003) estimates deorbit costs for various spacecraft configurations and orbits. Xxxx et al. (2007) use game-theoretic cooperation archetypes and system dynamics modeling to explore a “partial coopera- tion" strategy between two nations for sharing tracking data in view of spacecraft and sensor economics and national security concerns. To assess the benefit of debris mitigation strategies, Xxxxxxx and Xxxx (2009) propose a new metric of × × 1The picture is further complicated by possible introduction of swarms of small spacecraft as these could represent a collision hazard to other spacecraft both during their operational lifetime and post-mission. Some such swarms, labeled “smart dust" spacecraft, with size on the order of (1 cm 1 cm 25 µm) and considered for altitudes between 300 and 1000 km, can be employed in vast numbers (e.g., 10,000) and use electrochromic plating to extend mission lifetime. It might be possible, however, to reduce risk to other spacecraft by changing the reflectivity of their plating in order to limit their orbital phase space domain. In addition, suitable design (i.e., a high area-to-mass ratio) can facilitate deorbiting at end-of-life (Colombo and XxXxxxx, 2010). “lifetime risk", which they define as the risk of catastrophic destruction posed to an operational spacecraft launched t years from present under a particular scenario of launch and mitigation assumptions. They propose the maximum of this lifetime risk over all future time as a metric of “. . . sustainability (loosely defined as the highest utility that can be maintained for all future time), which has gained some popularity as an alternative to economic efficiency (Xxxxxx et al., 2003, Ch. 4), particularly for studying resources that—like outer space—have no substitutes and are in the infancy of their exploitation". They also use lifetime risk to compute the difference in cumulative operational spacecraft destroyed through time T for compliance and non-compliance with deorbit guidelines, and term the asymptote of this value, “damage". Xxxxxxx and Xxxx identify various instruments used in environmental economics to achieve the target pollution level including “technology controls, ceilings or taxes on emissions, subsidies for pollution re- duction, tradeable emi...