Original subtitles

- [Man] T-minus 10, nine, eight, seven,

six, five, four, three.

- There's a border that all of us share.

And it keeps getting closer and closer.

It's right above our heads.

But it's not a border between two countries,

it's actually a boundary to a place

that used to be accessible to just a few of us,

but now more and more of us can cross this boundary.

- [Reporter] What's been dubbed the billionaire space race.

- And as that happens,

we humans risk messing it up.

We risk sealing this border completely

so no person or object can escape earth.

I want to show you how this might happen

and what we can do to avoid it.

- [Woman] Long-term simulations

show an exponential growth

in the number of objects in space.

- This is low earth orbit.

It's a zone about a thousand kilometers above earth.

This is a place where earth's gravity

can kind of pull you down,

but just enough to put you into a perpetual free fall

that we call an orbit.

Satellites we send into space

can orbit earth as far out

as tens of thousands of kilometers,

but it is in this low earth orbit

where a majority of earth's satellites reside.

The satellites here give us images like these

from telescopes like this.

They also allow us to anticipate hurricanes,

and observe trends like these.

These satellites gave us the satellite phone.

- Who has the satellite phone?

- They connect people to the internet,

and they help us map the world,

which is something I am very grateful for.

The satellites in low earth orbit are incredibly important.

Okay so how many satellites are up there?

Like 50 or maybe 100?

Let's see, how many, I'm Googling on my phone, let's check.

6,000?

6,000?

Whoa, okay.

So there's 6,000 satellites floating around the earth.

Turns out that half of those are dead.

They used to be satellites,

now they're just hunks of metal

the size of a small school bus spinning around our planet.

Of the 3,000 or so working satellites,

some are military, some are government,

but more than half of them are commercial.

Sorry, did that land?

Let me just say it again.

Half of the satellites are commercial,

they're from private companies.

Let me explain why that's a big deal.

For most of the time that we've been traveling to space,

space has been a government thing.

It was Russia that put up the first satellite

into low earth orbit in the '50s.

It was the Cold War so the U.S. was like we can do that too,

and we're gonna do it better,

so they created NASA, and focused

on getting as many satellites as they could

up into space.

- We need science,

this is for the American people,

the most critical problem of all.

- A bunch of these launches just sort of blew up

because they were really terribly made,

but eventually they got satellites into space.

They had something to prove.

Space was a political thing at the time.

- President Eisenhower reassures the nation

that Russia's success with the first satellite

does not indicate a serious lag in American rocket research.

- And the U.S. poured tons of money into making this happen,

and they did.

- Our satellite is definitely on orbit.

- So at this point space was a government thing,

but boy has that changed.

(upbeat music)

In recent years there has been an explosion

of satellites being put into space

that are not from the government or military,

but from private businesses,

to the point where today in 2021

there are over 100 private companies

that are building vehicles to take more stuff into space.

This is a space economy, it's a big deal.

And because of that, more and more stuff

is going into space.

This year, 2021, we've already launched

1100 objects into space.

That's the same total as we did in all of 2020,

and nearly 10% of what we've ever sent up into space.

The numbers are going up faster and faster and faster

every single year.

But there's a problem, potentially a huge problem

with all of this stuff going up into space,

and that problem is that space, at least low earth orbit,

this area right around our earth is limited.

Let me explain what I mean here.

You have all of these objects floating around our earth.

More and more every year.

So what happens if two of these satellites

by chance collide?

So what?

Satellites collide and maybe

some rich company loses some money, who cares?

No, no no no no no, no no no no.

Reminder that these objects are flying around earth

at 28,000 kilometers an hour,

that's eight kilometers a second.

That's one second, eight kilometers.

They go around earth 12 times per day.

And at that speed, things get a little bit crazy.

A few years ago, a fleck of debris,

like a little piece of dust

that was one millimeter in diameter,

like the tip of a sharp pencil, a tiny fleck,

was floating through low earth orbit at this speed,

and it hit a satellite's solar panels.

And this tiny fleck of dust

left a giant gash in the panels.

It was one millimeter in diameter.

In 2009, a collision between a defunct Russian space craft

and an operational commercial satellite

created this exact kind of shrapnel cloud,

completely disintegrated.

More than 2,300 hunks of space junk

that are now floating around our planet

at 28,000 kilometers an hour.

This shrapnel at one point put the Hubble Telescope at risk,

and it sort of freaked people out.

In an instant, two objects turned into thousands of objects,

all with new paths floating around our earth.

So the fear here is that

what if this became a chain reaction?

One collision makes more debris

which leads to another collision

which means even more debris, and more collisions,

and suddenly low earth orbit

becomes a minefield of space junk

hurling around our planet at deathly speeds

and launches a domino effect

that would wipe out our space infrastructure

leaving us trapped on the surface of earth

for generations beneath a violent cloud

of speeding shrapnel.

Unable to send anything up to space for a very long time.

This is the nightmare scenario.

It's a scenario that's portrayed in the movie Gravity

which is a very good movie.

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All right, let's get back to space borders.

Eventually of course, over the years,

this debris would slowly fall into the atmosphere,

it would lose altitude,

and it would burn up in our atmosphere.

But that would be generations of a world without satellites.

A world that is sealed from space.

Okay okay listen listen,

this is not gonna happen anytime soon,

by all counts we are safe from the chain reaction,

the probabilities are very low.

It isn't likely right now.

There's a lot of space up there.

- [Man] Space, the final frontier.

- But we are sending up

thousands of satellites per year now.

This may not be an issue now,

it certainly will be soon.

So what do you do with this?

We're in the midst of this new space race,

just like the one between the Soviets

and the U.S. in the '50s

but this time it's not governments,

it's like this guy,

and a bunch of guys just like him.

And they're the ones who are racing to space,

and they don't really care about

the potential scenario of a chain reaction.

Do you know why?

Because they have investors to please,

and a world to show that they can

privatize space the fastest.

(laughing)

So let's talk about the U.S. government really quick.

Of the 3,000 working satellites,

about 2,000 of them are American.

They come from American companies

or the American government.

So you would expect the American space government agency,

NASA, to be the responsible steward

of low earth orbit,

and make sure that these private space companies

are at least following some traffic rules

when they send them up into space

so that they don't collide.

Alas, no one, including NASA,

wants to be the one to slow down the new space race.

Instead they are focusing on quote,

accelerating a thriving commercial economy

in low earth orbit.

The U.S. government is sort of doing

what it did in the '50s,

we've got a get an edge on this new space thing

and let's focus on just getting

as much stuff up as we can.

So NASA is helping to fund these private space companies

who are sending up so many satellites

and objects into space.

Like SpaceX, Elon Musk's company

is sending up 60 satellites a month.

60 satellites just being thrust into space every month,

and he's asked for a lot more.

He wants to get 42,000 up there.

That's what he's asking for,

that's what he's asking for approval for,

42,000, just 42,000.

So far he's gotten approval for 12,000.

Amazon is now getting into the space game.

They've been approved to send up over 3,000.

We're not slowing down.

So clearly the race is on,

and no one's thinking too hard about traffic.

- You're blaming me for the traffic?

- Should I?

- So how do we avoid filling up low earth orbit?

And avoid the collisions

that could potentially cause

a devastating chain reaction.

These companies are taking some protocol,

like SpaceX will send up these satellites

in like a caravan,

like a line of satellites

which looks really trippy by the way.

I was out stargazing for my galaxy video last year

and I looked up and I saw this like perfect line

of blinking dots in the sky

and I was like what is happening?

I was sure that I was seeing a UFO,

like this is it.

Like I've had my encounter with extra terrestrials.

It was like an existential moment for me,

I was like what is happening?

20 minutes later I looked it up

and learned about the caravans that SpaceX does.

They do this so that all of the satellites

are in the same path

so that they have way less likelihood of colliding

because they're not just on random paths

they're like all together.

So yeah these private companies

are taking some precautions,

but as we all know,

you can't rely on private companies

to regulate themselves for the good of everyone.

Like, are we really gonna be like

you guys regulate yourself

and we'll all be safe and everyone will be good, no.

That's not how it works.

What we need is mutually agreed upon laws

on how stuff can be launched into low earth orbit

so that we actually have some traffic management in space.

There are no rules of the road in space,

no formal agreements on how traffic should behave

in low earth orbit.

In other words, this is the wild west.

Wait, isn't there like space law?

Like treaties?

Like the outer space treaty, the moon treaty,

the International Space Station,

yeah but none of these things talk about traffic.

All these countries have signed these treaties

that just say space is for everybody,

no one can conquer space, no Star Wars.

- That isn't very reassuring.

- Closest any treaty gets to addressing

the space traffic thing,

says that quote, states shall be liable

for damage caused by their space objects.

In other words, if you send an object up,

and your country damages an object from another country,

your country has to take responsibility in some form.

But wait, does that actually happen?

Remember that defunct Russian space craft

that collided with the commercial satellite in 2009?

Who took responsibility?

And wait, was it the Russian satellite

that hit the commercial one,

or was it the commercial one that hit the Russian one?

Like how do you dole out responsibility

and blame when you're talking about

two satellites just floating through space

who happen to run into each other.

So in the end, the responsibility

landed squarely on the shoulders of, nobody.

- How did we get into this mess?

- Decision makers couldn't even agree

on who was responsible

for launching the commercial satellite in the first place

because multiple countries were involved with launching it,

and they hadn't registered it with the UN

like they promised they would back in some treaty in 1972.

I mean it's a total mess.

There is no order or regulation or clarity in space law,

which right now is fine, but soon it won't be.

So here we are with no traffic rules,

no history of holding anyone accountable

for unintentional space collisions,

and we're about to send up

tens of thousands more satellites.

What we need is productive cooperation,

like humans have been able to do

in so many aspects of our global international system.

The International Space Station is a great example.

It has functioned

as a multi-national collaborative project in space.

Unfortunately what I've learned

is that when there's competition among countries,

a lot of these cooperative efforts

sort of go out the window.

There is growing tension between two super powers,

China and the U.S.

And China is in the middle of constructing

their own space station for low earth orbit.

India is preparing to send their own as well.

This is competition, not cooperation.

Our existing space law,

which was all sort of drafted in the '60s and the '70s

never anticipated private companies

sending up thousands of satellites.

And it didn't anticipate China and India and the U.S.

Competing for space power.

Our desire to explore space

is not just about showing how powerful

and innovative we are.

So much technology has come from our space exploration.

From solar cells to cochlear implants,

to firefighting technology.

The development of the micro chip

which was majorly accelerated by NASA,

and now microchips drive our entire world.

The pursuit of reaching out into space

has consistently driven meaningful innovation.

So this is important,

we should absolutely protect the future

of this really wonderful thing that humans have done.

We've escaped our atmosphere,

we've escaped gravity,

and we've learned so much in the process.

So, there are a lot of objects in space,

they're floating around,

and there is a body of treaties and law

that is way outdated.

My hope is that as we send these thousands and thousands

of satellites into space,

we consider the implications of what happens

if we get too hasty, send too much stuff up

and things start to run into each other.

It's not worth the risk in my mind.

If we don't look ahead,

we could turn space from a border

that we can all cross together,

and learn together as human beings,

into a border that is impenetrable,

that's dangerous, that keeps us trapped

here on this warming planet,

unable to continue to explore the world of outer space.

(soft music)