It sounds like a hook, like "don't like all the space debris? use our management platform" and then it'll suddenly start costing money

SpaceX has a very, very large financial interest in avoiding collisions. Providing this service helps ensure that.

Several governments have an even bigger interest in avoiding these collisions, so, these systems should have existed for decades now.

But, you can always trust the government to spend 10x more to do 10x worst...

	▲	notahacker 27 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The US already provides publicly accessible conjunction avoidance data based on data points they have. They don't have the same number of satellites in the sky to make real time observations in as many different directions though.
	▲	mikkupikku 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> so, these systems should have existed for decades now. Dubious. Perhaps if Congress could be persuaded to invest in tons of radio telescopes / radars, positioned all around the world, but good luck with that. The space-based approach used by SpaceX is something that presently only SpaceX is equipped to implement. Tracking star conjunctions only gives you high quality data on space debris / satellite maneuvers if you have a huge net of star trackers in orbit, and that's something which only SpaceX has been able to do.