Space has traffic. Where are the traffic lights?
Thousands of satellites circle Earth at orbital speed. When two may be headed for the same place, who notices, who decides whether to move—and who has the right of way?
A curiosity-led show by Mike Ochs
This week, Mike’sinterested in…
01 / Episode OneField Notes
The hidden system
A warning is not an instruction.
Orbit increasingly has traffic information. It does not have one globally empowered traffic controller.
Between a sensor spotting trouble and a spacecraft firing its thrusters sits a distributed chain of estimates, software, operators, institutions, and judgment.
The question
When two spacecraft may collide, who moves?
The mechanism
Observation → orbit estimate → warning → coordination → maneuver.
The surprise
Collision probability can change dramatically as better observations arrive.
The limit
Better coordination cannot move dead satellites or debris.
02 / The mechanism
Seeing danger is only the beginning.
No single organization owns the whole chain.
A — operational satellite · B — debris · illustrative, not to scale
- 01
Track
Radar, telescopes, and operator data estimate where objects are.
- 02
Predict
Software screens uncertain paths for close approaches.
- 03
Decide
Risk changes as observations arrive. Operators judge whether to act.
- 04
Coordinate
Independent organizations exchange what they know and intend.
- 05
Move
A maneuver must avoid solving one problem by creating another.
03 / The method
Start with a simple question. Follow it until the hidden system appears.
Each investigation follows the evidence, learns from people close to the work, and tests the easy answer against its strongest counterargument.
Build
Make or test something when the question benefits from it.
Explore
Learn the mechanism, people, incentives, failures, and disagreements.
Share
Turn what survives scrutiny into a story an intelligent non-expert can follow.
Start with a deceptively simple question. Expose the hidden system. Show what surprised Mike, what credible people disagree about, and what he now thinks.
04 / The curiosity map
Space is the first stop. Not the boundary.
Future investigations can go anywhere a good question leads—into the systems hiding in plain sight.
- 01Space & orbits
- 02Machines & robotics
- 03Science & biology
- 04AI & computing
- 05Infrastructure & manufacturing
- 06Business & incentives
Unlimited questions. One serious investigation at a time.
Field note 001 / Curiosity in orbit05 / About Mike
Curious enough to ask. Skeptical enough to keep pulling.
Mike Ochs is not presenting himself as the world’s authority. He is the technically capable, skeptical investigator trying to understand how things actually work—and where the clean explanation stops matching reality.
His interests move across science, technology, engineering, business, space, and the physical world. The common thread is a deceptively simple question hiding a much larger system.
The first investigation is underway
Follow the question. See where it leads.
Episode One is still in research. Return as the investigation takes shape—and the next deceptively simple question appears.
Return to Episode One