Astroscale, Space Debris, and Earth's Orbital Commons

An engineer and technology entrepreneur, Nobu Okada, had turned a mid-life crisis into a bold—some would say quixotic—quest to prevent a tragedy of the commons at the global scale. Namely, Okada believed the accumulation of debris in near-Earth orbital space posed a serious threat to a vast array of critical satellites and, thereby, both the modern information economy and the future of human activities in space. Frustrated at what he saw as far too slow a reaction to the threat among major space powers, Okada planned to develop a spacecraft capable of adhering to, and redirecting, that debris. By lowering the costs of debris removal, he hoped to make it routine, even in the absence of government action. As of 2016 his company, Astroscale, which had secured private funding years earlier, was nearing the first demonstration of the technology. This case is intended to help students understand how a tragedy of the commons develops in a specific, nearly textbook example. As important, this case is about potential solutions to the tragedy of the commons when the market and policy both fall short.