Post Script
How Hardspace taps into a present-day littering problem
Blackbird Interactive’s vision of an Earth ringed by inexpertly butchered derelicts is hardly years away. As of May 10, 2022, the European Space Agency is tracking 31,140 pieces of orbital debris, weighing about 9,900 tonnes in total and ranging from ‘natural’ litter such as meteoroids to human-created space junk such as discarded rocket launch stages. Based on statistical modelling, the ESA estimates that there are around 130 million pieces of debris in Earth’s orbit that are larger than a millimetre. That may not sound like much, but when you accelerate a paint fleck to 15,700 miles per hour it can do plenty of damage, and many pieces of debris are much larger – the estimate includes almost 3,000 defunct satellites, which countries such as China sometimes use for target practice.
Space organisations have begun taking steps to mitigate the debris problem, such as designing rockets to minimise ‘shedding’ or moving worn-out satellites into ‘graveyard’ orbits, where they pose no risk to new launches. The ESA and NASA have procedures for calculating the risk of a collision and moving active spacecraft out of the way – the International Space Station carried out three such manoeuvres in 2020. But debris-creating events such as collisions have also become much more common over the past decade, and the larger the debris field grows, the higher the odds of an irreversible ‘Kessler syndrome’ cascade effect that would render certain orbits no-go zones, especially for crewed vehicles. Hardspace (whose inspirations include Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity) takes place in the aftermath of such a cascade. As a new Lynx employee entering orbit, you’re billed for the cost of flying through the wreckage.
The near-Earth space junk problem has complex social and political ramifications. If one spacefaring country or entity creates orbital debris, it’s a problem for everyone, but international clean-up operations are hindered by the tension between public bodies and corporations such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, which see outer space as a revenue opportunity rather than a global commons in need of preservation. According to a University Of Southampton study from 2021, SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites are now responsible for the lion’s share of near-collisions in low Earth orbit. It remains to be seen whether Elon Musk will take any responsibility for tidying up the mess, but if he does, he may well find a way to make it profitable.
Musk and other space entrepreneurs are, in theory, checked by the 1967 international Outer Space Treaty, which holds that “the exploration and use of outer space should be carried on for the benefit of all peoples irrespective of the degree of their economic or scientific development”. This would extend to tidying up your litter. But the OST is a Cold War-era document that’s sorely in need of an update. It’s aimed primarily at governments, not corporations, and has been undermined by legislation such as the US Space Act in 2015, which gives US space firms the rights to own and sell resources mined from asteroids. Existing SpaceX provisions for life on Mars – cheekily written into the Starlink terms of service – are arguably in breach of the OST.
All of which is to say that, if you’re making a game about the complexities of outer-space existence, you don’t need to venture that far from Earth. Games such as No Man’s Sky, Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous and the forthcoming Starfield portray the interplanetary void as a wilderness where the adventure stems from the thrill of the unknown. Hardspace trades a little in this frontier fantasy: it tantalises with the thought of acquiring your very own ship and leaving Earth behind for a new life on Mars, albeit not beyond Lynx’s clutches. But it’s also a reminder that the bits of outer space that are of greatest consequence to us today are already heavily, and perhaps irreversibly, shaped by human activity.