I would imagine the incentives being aligned (SX can’t make full economic and cultural Starship ROI if there is a planetsized wall of debris they can’t fly through) means that there will be multiple independent overlapping checks both private and government for each launch mission to ensure that it doesn’t become worse.
SpaceX stands to lose just as much as the rest of us if they fuck this up, possibly more.
> SpaceX stands to lose just as much as the rest of us if they fuck this up, possibly more
No it will go bankrupt and be forgotten.
While we leave future generations with a problem that may not be economically or technically solvable and ruin space for ever.
As long as there's enough time lag between making money and destroying the planet, there's no disincentive.
The mechanism you describe, logically, should've prevented tetraethyl lead in gasoline.
I'd bet there is a very wide gray zone between the current situation, and a "planetsized wall of debris", which badly damaged SpaceX's bottom line.
And, in much of that gray zone, SpaceX could be the very profitable leader in a booming market for launching all the replacement satellites, heavier collision-"resistant" satellites, and debris-sweeping satellites.
This is a good point, but I thought the fundamental idea of Kessler syndrome is a cascade trigger point which rapidly and inevitably becomes the point of no return at which the effects become inescapable.
Guess: Doom-preaching scientists often have vested interests in preserving very expensive, hard-to-replace satellites - say, Hubble. Journalists know that "more doom" => "more clicks". Nationalists and military folks love to talk smack about other nations' debris-spreading accidents and ASAT activities. And the whole canon and mindset of Kessler-ology was established before SpaceX made launch (of replacement satellites) anywhere near so quick and cheap as it would be now.
Unsure if facetious, but geostationary is a single orbit, so the crowding is end to end. The space outside of that one orbit is infinite and will never be a “wall”.