A Field Guide to Orbital Neighborhoods
Orbit is becoming a place with traffic, infrastructure, and competing uses. It is time to design it like a shared environment.
We still talk about orbit as if it were empty altitude. In practice, each useful band is a neighborhood shaped by physics. Satellites cross paths, share radio spectrum, cast reflected light, and eventually become debris.
Streets made of velocity
An orbital neighborhood has no fixed streets. Its geometry is made from speed, inclination, and timing. Traffic management must model where objects are going, not merely where they are.
Buildings that must disappear
Earth architecture rarely begins with a plan for removing the building. Spacecraft should. End-of-life disposal, serviceability, and controlled reentry belong in the first sketch.
The mature space industry will be measured not only by how much it places above Earth, but by how gracefully those systems coexist, adapt, and leave.