Space Debris: How Can the U.S. and China Avoid the Tragedy of the Commons, with Nainika Sudheendra

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week I continue my conversations with some of the outstanding Schwarzman Scholars who presented at the Capstone Showcase in late June. In this episode, I speak with Nainika Sudheendra about the problem of space debris and what can be done to reduce the creation of more of it or even begin removal of debris before it makes the launching of new satellites more costly or even impossible.

2:34 Nainika’s background and interest in the Schwarzman program

5:33 Why Nainika focused on space debris

7:23 Nainika’s prior knowledge about the Chinese space program and what she learned through the Schwarzman program

10:30 How space debris is measured, the Kessler syndrome, and the hazards that space debris poses

14:33 The obstacles Nainika encountered in her research

16:35 How political leaders in China and the U.S. are thinking about the space debris problem

20:02 How debris mitigation might [ought to?] be incentivized, who is working on the problem now, and the role of private insurers

24:03 The Wolf Amendment and Chinese private sector space companies

27:22 Technologies for mitigating and remediating debris

31:00 Lessons from another tragedy of the commons (the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer), and how the EU could take a leading role

34:59 The importance of data standardization and opportunities to negotiate fair use and safety precautions

38:17 How redundancy prevents public perception — the difficulty in going from “outage” to “outrage”

40:27 What Nainika has been doing since finishing at Schwarzman

Recommendations:

Nainika: From Streets to Stalls: The History and Evolution of Hawking and Hawker Centres in Singapore by Ryan Kueh (another Schwarzman alum)

Kaiser: Journalist Andrew Jones on Twitter; the South Indian restaurant Viks Chaat in Berkeley, California

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China.
0:13.4	In this program, we'll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends
0:19.0	that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics, and society.
0:25.5	Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to the way we think and talk about China.
0:33.4	I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
0:36.5	Cynica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
0:41.9	a national resource center for the study of East Asia.
0:44.8	The Cynica podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I am doing with the show,
0:50.3	please consider lending your support.
0:52.6	You can get me at Cinecapod at gmail.com.
0:55.3	And listeners, please support my efforts here at the Cynica Podcast.
0:59.4	At cincicapodcast.com, there you will find, in addition to the show,
1:04.4	the complete transcript of the pod, a weekly essay from me,
1:07.4	and now a wide range of offerings from some of your favorite China-focused
1:10.8	columnists and commentators. People like James Carter with his awesome This Week in China's
1:15.9	history column, Paul French, with the Ultimate China Bookshelf, Andrew Methman with Cinnika,
1:21.9	Chinese phrase of the week, and of course the guys over at the China Global South Project.
1:27.0	Now, if you heard the show two weeks ago with
1:28.7	Olivia Fu, you know that I've been featuring some of the more impressive capstone projects
1:33.3	produced by the most recent class at Schwartzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a highly
1:39.1	selective one-year master's program there. This week, I am delighted to be joined by the author of
1:43.6	what was easily among the most impressive of the Capstone projects presented at the showcase
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kaiser Kuo, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Kaiser Kuo and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.