On Tuesday, July 10, 2001, at 09:44 PM, Jim Windle wrote:

There is lots of junk up there. Schemes to de-orbit satellites at the end of their useful life have been put forward but they always fail on the liability issue. Apparently if a satellite falls out of orbit it is an "act of god" and the owner/insurer is not responsible for damages, but if the satellite is deliberately de-orbitted the owner/insurer is on the hook. No one, partiucularly the insurance companies wants to try it.

Five dozen Iridium satellites were on the verge of being de-orbited when a buyer could not be found. (Was this just jive? Possibly, but plans were underway and retro-rocket firing sequences were ready to go. Had the U.S.G. not arranged a deal to keep the system in operation for military/embassy/spook purposes, I expect the de-orbiting would have happened.) The "act of God" argument is a weak one, anyway. Had Motorola and the other Iridium partners simply said "We'll trust in God and just let them fall where they may," I expect they would have been hit with lawsuits as bits of wreckage made it to the ground. A controlled de-orbiting over the Pacific was seen by them as the wiser choice. --TIm May