Public Goods
The Shared Orbit
The Shared Orbit is a Public Goods scenario. The core lesson: A shared resource with no single owner and fragmented oversight gets treated as free by everyone using it, until the accumulated cost of that treatment becomes unavoidable for everyone. You run a mid-size satellite operator. Your engineering team proposes adding a modest cost to every new satellite design: a reliable deorbiting mechanism and extra fuel reserved for collision-avoidance maneuvers late in the satellite's life. DecisionPlay maps the players, payoffs, and equilibrium dynamics that shape how this situation typically resolves.
The situation
You run a mid-size satellite operator. Your engineering team proposes adding a modest cost to every new satellite design: a reliable deorbiting mechanism and extra fuel reserved for collision-avoidance maneuvers late in the satellite's life. None of your competitors currently do this consistently, and the shared orbital environment your satellites operate in is getting more crowded every year. Adding the safety margin will make your satellites slightly more expensive and slightly less capable at launch, for a benefit that mostly accrues to every operator in orbit, not just you.
Background
No company or country owns the shared orbital environment outright, and oversight of it is split across multiple agencies with different mandates. Every operator's satellites add some collision risk to that shared environment, but the cost of that added risk is spread across everyone, not charged back to whoever created it, which is exactly the setup that leads to under-investment in mitigation industry-wide.
What this reveals
Shared risk without shared cost gets under-managed
When the cost of a risk is spread across everyone but the decision to reduce that risk sits with individual actors who bear the full cost of acting alone, the rational individual choice is to under-invest, even though everyone would be better off if the group invested more collectively.
How to counter it: Look for ways to convert a voluntary, unilateral contribution into a shared, binding, or enforced one, whether through licensing requirements, industry standards, or proportional funding schemes, since voluntary individual action alone tends to undersupply a genuinely shared good.
A question to sit with
Have you paid for something that benefited people who did not contribute, in a way that made you hesitant to do it again? What would have made contributing feel fair?
Frequently asked questions
- What game theory concept does The Shared Orbit illustrate?
- The Shared Orbit illustrates Public Goods. A shared resource with no single owner and fragmented oversight gets treated as free by everyone using it, until the accumulated cost of that treatment becomes unavoidable for everyone.
- What is the situation in The Shared Orbit?
- You run a mid-size satellite operator. Your engineering team proposes adding a modest cost to every new satellite design: a reliable deorbiting mechanism and extra fuel reserved for collision-avoidance maneuvers late in the satellite's life. None of your competitors currently do this consistently, and the shared orbital environment your satellites operate in is getting more crowded every year.
- What does The Shared Orbit reveal about how people decide?
- Shared risk without shared cost gets under-managed. When the cost of a risk is spread across everyone but the decision to reduce that risk sits with individual actors who bear the full cost of acting alone, the rational individual choice is to under-invest, even though everyone would be better off if the group invested more collectively.
- How do you avoid the trap in The Shared Orbit?
- Look for ways to convert a voluntary, unilateral contribution into a shared, binding, or enforced one, whether through licensing requirements, industry standards, or proportional funding schemes, since voluntary individual action alone tends to undersupply a genuinely shared good.
- What is the research behind The Shared Orbit?
- No company or country owns the shared orbital environment outright, and oversight of it is split across multiple agencies with different mandates. Every operator's satellites add some collision risk to that shared environment, but the cost of that added risk is spread across everyone, not charged back to whoever created it, which is exactly the setup that leads to under-investment in mitigation industry-wide.
- How long does The Shared Orbit take to play?
- About 6 min, at core difficulty, across 3 decision points. It runs in your browser with no account and no sign-in.
Keep exploring
More Current Affairs scenarios, or browse all scenarios. New to this? Start with how DecisionPlay works or the game theory glossary.
Topics: public-goods, commons, space, cooperation