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Comment by Oculus | Hacker News Reader

I know there are regulations for flying through airspace which require me to get permission depending on the type vehicle/altitude obtained. Are there similar regulations for space? Do I have to go somewhere to get permission to orbit in a certain plane or is it everybody for themselves?

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IIRC, you do have to get an allocation from the UN for an orbit. There's the Space Law which restricts just about anybody from placing a satellite in geostationary orbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law), and there was another similar law which I can't seem to find atm. Not sure if LEO is restricted. IMO this law is ridiculous, no one on Earth owns space.

Not that ridiculous - there's a lot of important stuff up there, and it's easy for someone careless or malicious to accidentally damage it. Geostationary orbits in particular are very crowded, so it's not going to be easy to get an orbital slot, and if you don't follow fairly fairly exacting stationkeeping, reliability and end-of-life requirements your satellite will drift from its assigned location and disrupt or even damage the other satellites up there.

There's a huge difference between earth orbits and deep space. The reality is that the desirable earth orbits are actually fairly crowded, and allowing completely unregulated access could definitely endanger missions. The differential speeds between orbits are so great that a flake of paint can severely damage a satellite. If we want to have useful satellite missions in the years to come we need to regulate access to space.

You're right, there should be no law- if you want a geostationary slot and another satellite is in it, knock it down. I wonder if Comcast is hiring anti-satellite operators.

The law is ridiculous, but if we learned anything from our history is that if someone can access/control it - someone can own it.

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