At Vote:Orbital Space Safety Act [Complete]

Orbital Space Safety Act

A resolution to increase the quality of the world's environment, at the expense of industry.

Category: Environmental

Industry Affected: All Businesses

Proposed by: Witchcliff

Description: Noting the enlarging amount of obsolete satellites, space vehicles, spent rocket casing and other debris currently in orbit around inhabited planets for reasons including, but not limited to, various nations space races, orbiting weapons platforms, exploration of space, deliberate dumping of junk into orbit and visiting space faring nations jettisoning their refuse.

Further noting this debris presents a danger to all nations, whether they use orbital space or not, and worried about the possible loss of life and/or property that could occur when some of this junk survives re-entry, and crashes onto the planet, or collides with working equipment in orbit, manned or unmanned.

Convinced measures to clean up this orbital space debris are necessary to protect life and property of all nations. This will work to promote international co-operation between nations of all technological levels, reduce the economic impact caused by nations losing working equipment to collisions with space junk, and ensure orbital space can be utilized by all in as safe and equal a manner as possible.

Mandates:

1 – All UN nations are responsible for any form of equipment put into orbital space by that nation. This includes anything launched by government and/or private agencies. Nations that use another nation’s facilities for launch purposes are still ultimately responsible for their own equipment.

2 - All UN nations with equipment in orbital space must be able to identify any equipment launched from or by their nation, whether by government or private agencies, and must immediately accept responsibility for any piece of their equipment that poses a danger, at the time it is identified as a danger.

3 – All nations with equipment in orbital space must take immediate proactive measures to repair, retrieve or destroy safely any piece of their equipment that is identified as space junk and identified as posing a danger to their own and/or other nation’s people or property. Nations may delegate direct and/or financial responsibility for dealing with said equipment down to private agencies within that nation at their own discretion.

4 – Nations that have equipment in orbital space are responsible for any and all costs incurred in dealing with their own space debris. If you can afford to build it and put it up there, you can afford the clean up.

Strongly encourages all nations with equipment in orbital space to co-operate with each other and share information and technology both to reduce the amount of space debris currently in orbit, and to improve methods of repair, retrieval or safe destruction of malfunctioning equipment in the future.

Urges all UN nations to work together to clean up unidentifiable and/or small space debris currently in orbital space, as much as they are technologically and/or financially able to assist, to ensure a cleaner, safer, environment for those nations with equipment and/or personnel in that environment, to reduce the possibility of objects damaging working equipment, and to reduce the danger of large pieces of debris falling back to the planet.

Encourages space faring nations to offer their services to assist with the disposal of orbital space debris. Payments and terms of contracts for these jobs will be at the discretion of the nation concerned to negotiate with the customer(s).

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