Publish: the reentry forcing nobody is required to measure
Affine-validated only. Every figure is either exact integer arithmetic over a corpus
pinned by sha256, or a verbatim quotation from a primary source with its citation.
WHAT IS MEASURED AND PUBLISHED:
One operator, 0% -> 45.8% of ALL mass entering the atmosphere, 2019-2025, exact grams.
Murphy et al. 2023 (PNAS 120(43) e2313374120, PALMS on NASA WB-57, SABRE campaign,
>500,000 single particles): 10 +/- 7% of stratospheric sulfuric acid particles above
120 nm already carry spacecraft metals, and — verbatim — "About 210 tons y-1 of
aluminum ablates from reentering spacecraft" against "about 20 tons y-1" ablated from
meteoroids.
FCC-authorized 19,408; pending applications of 100,000 (Gen3) and 1,000,000 (Orbital
Data Center, accepted DA 26-113). Authorized tier ~9x the measured rate; the pending
million ~465x.
AND THE FINDING THAT NEEDED NO MODEL AT ALL. A search across FCC, FAA, ITU, UN COPUOS and
national space law returned ZERO instruments requiring an operator to measure or report
the atmospheric consequence of reentry. The only duty that exists, new 47 CFR
100.201(d)(3), is "The number of satellites that re-entered the atmosphere" — a
semi-annual integer count. A demising satellite is not an FAA "reentry vehicle" (51 USC
50902(19) requires "substantially intact"), so 14 CFR 450 never attaches. The FAA's
Congressionally-mandated report on constellation reentry contains ZERO occurrences of
ozone, alumina, stratosphere or air quality. The FCC proposes excluding space operations
from NEPA as "extraterritorial". The FAA proposes waiving thirteen environmental statutes
including the Clean Air Act.
WHAT IS REFUSED, AND WHY THE PAGE IS STRONGER FOR IT:
No extinction claim. No saturation year — that requires a capacity in the same units and
no published source states one. No established ecological harm: five models disagree on
the SIGN, and Wang et al. 2025 in Nature positively DETECTS ozone recovery.
The response is NOT KNOWN, published as a result.
THREE FACTS THAT CUT AGAINST US, PUT BEFORE THE ONES THAT DO NOT:
The trailing measured flux is 178 t/yr, BELOW the 450 t/yr the ESA studies SpaceX cited
to the FCC assume. SpaceX's own demisability analysis attributes the surviving 5% mostly
to SILICON and names no aluminium fraction. And the meteoric denominator is contested
sevenfold between papers sharing co-authors, so every "N times natural" ratio — ours
included — must name which denominator it uses. The page says so.
It also records that this repository previously published a figure five times too high, by
taking "42,000 satellites" from circulation without asking which regulatory tier it
belonged to. FCC 22-91 para 116 decomposes that number itself. The correction is on the
page, not applied silently.
The ask rests only on what is established and survives every disagreement above, because
the disagreement is the argument for it: require the measurement. Report mass and material
rather than a count. Fund the instrument that already produced the 10 +/- 7% figure. Do
not remove the only review hook while the question is open. Publish the denominator.
validate.sh: 31 passed, 0 failed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>