The tax wouldn't be small. I do agree, though, the only real answer is to charge for putting things in orbit and refund it to whoever deorbits the thing.

A fee per kilogram placed in orbit, refundable if the entire mass is deorbited as a single object, seems like a reasonable starting point.

If that fee is the entire estimated near-term cost to recover the object, it would also create incentives for entities putting large amounts of mass in orbit to focus on improved strategies for removal: if removal becomes lower cost than the fee, it's worth paying someone to recover your debris if a satellite fails in order to recover the fee.

This would have to work across borders or else you'd create a downward force on the space industry in your nation. If the US had a tax to launch stuff, then suddenly Russia has a competitive advantage.

> I can't find xboneslife's comment to reply to

I can't even find their account https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xboneslife

Wonder what happened...

Even weirder, this discussion is Google's only relevant hit for "xboneslife."

Surreal.

I went to reply to the user, then got a "comment deleted" error. First time I've seen that on HN.

weird . I hope the deletion thing doesn't become a trend here.