I’m not entirely sure that removing a dead satellite from orbit is illegal anyway…
↓ Transcript
Ace
Well, Deputy Admiral Peach and Senior Captain X. You matched my hair already? How did you grow out the sides?
Peach
These are wigs. One of the crew already put up a pattern for them on the fabbers. It’s tradition for an incoming captain to change her hair style, so we went for it. I think it looks good on X, don’t you?
Ace
They look good on both of you. I think my stylist should get a royalty, though. But, could you go full cover? I’d like to make this a clean room.
X
So Chief Walton briefed us. But please tell me we aren’t stealing a satellite.
Ace
OK. We aren’t stealing a satellite.
X
That’s a relief.
Ace
Not that anyone will miss, anyway.
Well, Deputy Admiral Peach and Senior Captain X. You matched my hair already? How did you grow out the sides?
Peach
These are wigs. One of the crew already put up a pattern for them on the fabbers. It’s tradition for an incoming captain to change her hair style, so we went for it. I think it looks good on X, don’t you?
Ace
They look good on both of you. I think my stylist should get a royalty, though. But, could you go full cover? I’d like to make this a clean room.
X
So Chief Walton briefed us. But please tell me we aren’t stealing a satellite.
Ace
OK. We aren’t stealing a satellite.
X
That’s a relief.
Ace
Not that anyone will miss, anyway.
If nobody misses it was it really stolen?
It will be missed, even dead satellites are tracked – for reasons noted in my link below.
He’d actually be doing Earth a favor; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU but unless he reports the removal a missing satellite, even a dead one, will cause a panic in those who track such things.
While Ace might WANT to report it, any such message would most likely be picked-up by those “mysterious forces” who are committed to blocking both teleportation & any form of communication. If Ace wants to succeed, he’ll stay unnoticed, until it’s too late to block him.
Al Mar, thanks for the youtube link. i knew about the space junk, but not that it might be that bad. it might explain the lack of alien visitors if many races trapped them selves on their home planets that way. as for tracking unused satellites, there was an article recently about a “lost” satellite being found. https://www.space.com/39611-lost-nasa-satellite-working-again.html
They didn’t lose that satellite; they lost contact with it. They could not communicate with it but they still knew where it was.
Yeah, it’s one of the Great Filters. But there’s another that Andy has touched on with his Orions. Fact is if you have fusion you don’t NEED to visit planets like ours. “Interstellar space is not empty. Best estimates of the size of the Oort cloud of a typical G star is around 2LY radius. Which means that in many cases, the Oort clouds of neighbouring stars would butt up against each other and maybe even interpenetrate. The requirement for fusion is because it’s just about the only way of getting reliable energy two light years from the nearest star. As far as we can tell, cometary bodies (“dirty snowballs”) contain enough of everything to build world ships (colonies of reasonable size with engines) given time.
So colonists could island-hop across space, with reasonable distances to travel at each step. This also means that, eventually, there would be far more people in interstellar space than close to suns.” And no need to come anywhere near a planetary civilization like ours.
I should actually rephrase this: The Oort clouds aren’t so much a Great Filter as they are a great sponge – they could act to soak up a civilization’s expansion into space.
He could leave a dummy satellite in its place.
Or simply hack a decaying orbit with expected burn up on the way down.
I would expect that removing a derelict satellite would fall under laws for salvage such as the ones for derelict vessels at sea.
According to then old TV series “Salvage One”, it is. =)
I vote for Salvage One being admissible in a court of law because Ben Matlock.
I can see it going either way, depending on who grabs the satellite, and how much proprietary tech is aboard. I can also see it taking a long time to get through the courts, particularly since it would probably require new international treaties to be negotiated. The only resource a quick Google turned up was a paper from the early 90s, which concluded that then-current treaties didn’t cover space salvage, and new treaties would be required, but that maritime salvage law would be the best starting point.
So, unless there’s been a new international agreement on the matter in the last quarter-century, maritime salvage law is a reasonable expectation, but not yet the actuality.
The FCC is really sticky on the satellite owners having a plan to deorbit them later, to keep from just throwing junk in space.
https://spacenews.com/fcc-to-seek-comment-on-revised-orbital-debris-guidelines/
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354773A1.pdf
Well then it’s a good thing that Russia, China, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Bulgaria, and about 2 dozen other nations who have placed satellites in orbit all voluntarily conform to FCC regulations.
Oh, wait…
The less stuff that ends up in orbit, the better. And it is in those other countries best interest to keep the clutter down given the careful planning that has to go into putting a satellite up without having it destroyed by something else in orbit. And items tracked are not just the big stuff. Bolts, nuts, even tools dropped from spacewalks all have to be tracked as one could destroy a vital satellite. (There are rumors that the USSR took out onto of the USA spy satellites back in the day with a few ball bearings. )
If the satellite is put back in it’s original place, then it wouldn’t be stealing. just borrowing it for a time. better to ask forgiveness than ask permission (?).
Black uniform? Seems like that would be more a demotion than a movement towards Admiral.
Think about Medic Ready’s complaints about Ace’s belt colour, and the multiple references to being “demoted down to black sleeves” (I know these aren’t “sleeves”, but still there is the implication that black is a low-ranking colour). Cadets like Sky was wearing dark grey, etc.