Ethics of Repair: From the Earth’s High Orbits to its High Seas

The Infrastructure of Invisibility

As satellite constellations proliferate, orbital space has transitioned from a distant "above" to a kinetic, operational layer of the Earth system. This anthropogenic shell now underwrites the essential functions of modern life, including precision navigation, weather forecasting, global finance, and disaster response. Yet, this total infrastructural dependence is coupled with a profound civic invisibility. As of early 2026, the catalogue of active spacecraft exceeds 14,300, yet they remain sensory ghosts to the populations they serve. This asymmetry, in which total reliance is paired with sensory absence, allows the crises of orbital congestion, collision risk, and end-of-life disposal to be treated as economic externalities rather than urgent questions of environmental governance.

Defining the Vertical Commons

This paper proposes a transdisciplinary framework for investigating what I term the "vertical commons," a continuous, jurisdictional geography belonging to the "common heritage of mankind." This commons extends from near Earth orbital regimes down to the high seas. These are two realms increasingly unified by toxic "waste metabolisms" that operate beyond the reach of public scrutiny.

Drawing on Steven J. Pyne’s characterisation of "extreme environments," I elucidate these two frontiers as remote and technologically mediated zones. In these areas, the absence of a permanent human and ecological presence translates into diminished political urgency. Within this framing, I examine two specific geographies of abandonment:

• The Graveyard Orbit: The region located several hundred kilometres above the geostationary belt, where defunct satellites are "parked" in perpetuity to prevent interference with operational assets.
• The Spacecraft Cemetery: The South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area near Point Nemo, where controlled reentries are targeted to sink decommissioned hardware into the deep sea.

Methodology: Forensic Aesthetics as Knowledge Production

Methodologically, I deploy artistic cartography and forensic aesthetics as modes of environmental inquiry rather than mere communication. This approach moves beyond outreach to treat creative practice as a rigorous form of knowledge production. By translating public orbital catalogues, disposal protocols, and re-entry narratives into a suite of visual propositions, I render these hidden infrastructures and their afterlives perceptible and therefore contestable. This method surfaces the embodied, affective, and justice-relevant dimensions of the vertical commons that are often sidelined in conventional environmental social science.

Ethics of Repair

To theorise the affective stakes of this transformation, I introduce the concept of vertical solastalgia. This is a specific form of grief triggered not by damaged ground alone, but by the slow sacrifice of a once legible sky and an assumedly inexhaustible high seas. Here, grief is not merely a sentiment; it is an epistemic signal, or a way of seeing that resists the amnesia encouraged by massive altitude and remoteness.

By reframing the graveyard orbit and the spacecraft cemetery as a single and layered geography of abandonment, this paper argues for an expanded environmental ethic. We must dissolve the artificial separations between land, sea, and sky, reframing the vertical commons not as a convenient sink for decommissioned technology, but as a domain of collective care, stewardship, and urgent repair.