Space Debris: How Can the U.S. and China Avoid the Tragedy of the Commons, with Nainika Sudheendra

This week I continue my conversations with some of the outstanding Schwarzman Scholars who presented at the Capstone Showcase in late June. In this episode, I speak with Nainika Sudheendra about the problem of space debris and what can be done to reduce the creation of more of it or even begin removal of debris before it makes the launching of new satellites more costly or even impossible.

2:34 Nainika’s background and interest in the Schwarzman program

5:33 Why Nainika focused on space debris 

7:23 Nainika’s prior knowledge about the Chinese space program and what she learned through the Schwarzman program

10:30 How space debris is measured, the Kessler syndrome, and the hazards that space debris poses 

14:33 The obstacles Nainika encountered in her research 

16:35 How political leaders in China and the U.S. are thinking about the space debris problem

20:02 How debris mitigation might [ought to?] be incentivized, who is working on the problem now, and the role of private insurers 

24:03 The Wolf Amendment and Chinese private sector space companies 

27:22 Technologies for mitigating and remediating debris 

31:00 Lessons from another tragedy of the commons (the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer), and how the EU could take a leading role 

34:59 The importance of data standardization and opportunities to negotiate fair use and safety precautions

38:17  How redundancy prevents public perception — the difficulty in going from “outage” to “outrage” 

40:27 What Nainika has been doing since finishing at Schwarzman 

Recommendations:

Nainika: From Streets to Stalls: The History and Evolution of Hawking and Hawker Centres in Singapore by Ryan Kueh (another Schwarzman alum) 

Kaiser: Journalist Andrew Jones on Twitter; the South Indian restaurant Viks Chaat in Berkeley, California 

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