⌛Why Watchtower
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana
Please note that this entire document is a work in progress and is subject to updates.
Introduction
The history of the space sector started with war & weapons manufacturing [1] and the culture that it birthed [2] has virally imbued within the civilian space sector. While the rise of private spaceflight is starting to ensure less reliance on the government, it forces the civilian sector to keep ties to the government due to legacy regimes. These regimes were once created to ensure a global order after 1945 was maintained. In the space sector, this inherently forced private enterprise to bootlick up with government officials as seen with Boeing/FAA and Boeing-Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Defence. Outside the space sector, we saw and still see this with our institutions - from the 2008 financial crisis to now institutions failing during the era of Covid-19.
The space sector has always loved the ideals set out in fictional verses like Star Trek, etc. but in reality fails to deliver them. The culture born out of war has created a siloed & surveilled environment. This isn’t conducive when it comes to protecting our planet & environment, especially in an era where issues such as the human impacts on climate and our planet are an ever-increasing priority. Planetary security is national/community security but not the other way around. In the case of the space environment— our crowded orbits and space debris...👇
Why Crowded Orbits and Space Debris?
Crowded Orbits and space debris are as much (if not more) of a concern as climate. Put simply, we rely on satellites every day from location-based services to acquiring climate science data to assess their impact on the planet. Debris from the 1950s during the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union still exists today. Today, larger satellite constellations are being added into orbit [3] and countries are still performing missile tests as they did during the Cold War - this time, it's not just Russia and the U.S. but also India and China.
In November 2021, the Russian Federation launched an anti-satellite missile test which created debris that has a strong likelihood of hitting the International Space Station and the Chinese Tiangong Space Station among other satellites we use on a daily basis. In December 2021, China accused the U.S. and SpaceX as its Starlink satellites had a near-miss incident with the Chinese Space Station that risked the lives of Chinese astronauts. More recently, a stage of a launch vehicle has been confirmed to hit the Moon, making a large enough impact that it'll create a new crater.
This is not the first time — the U.S., China, India and Russia have done this in the past.
As a species, we’re still trying to agree & work together on the human impacts of climate change — we are far from there. And while we’re trying to work together on that; there are new initiatives in the world of web3, that are making an attempt at it, that traditional institutions are currently failing at executing. In the same vein, while there are traditional institutions trying to work at mitigating the issue of space debris and crowded orbits, Watchtower offers a web3 alternative.
It is doing this by creating web3 legos via open-sourcing risk-pricing of collisions; introducing decentralised & distributed tracking data markets to help efficient pricing of satellite tracking data; amongst other tools.
References
Bromberg, J.L. (2000). NASA and the Space Industry. JHU Press
Johnson, S.B. (). The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs. JHU Press
Boley, A.C., Byers, M. Satellite mega-constellations create risks in Low Earth Orbit, the atmosphere and on Earth. Sci Rep 11, 10642 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89909-7
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