How a Nation of 100,000 Beat the World’s Space Powers
up for grabs: available for anyone to take or win
In 1987, an American satellite expert named Matt Nilson retired and moved to Tonga. The island nation has only about 100,000 citizens living in a place smaller than New York City. Their main exports are vanilla and squash. They also rent out parking spaces for satellites, 36,000 kilometers above the Earth.
By the 1980s, an international agency had divided the sky into about 180 sections, each available to whoever claimed it first. The United States, the Soviet Union, Japan and Europe took the ones they wanted for their satellites. Sixteen spaces above the Pacific Ocean sat up for grabs for years.
Nilson knew what those spaces would soon be worth. He took the idea to Princess Salote Pilolevu Tuita, who took it to her father, the king. In March 1990, Tonga filed a claim for all sixteen.
The reaction was fury. The United States protested. So did Intelsat, the company that held most of the world’s satellite parking spaces. It said Tonga was taking space it could never use, only to sell it. That was exactly the plan.
The agency read its own rules. Nothing stopped a sovereign country from claiming empty satellite space. When the Soviet Union broke up, satellites and launches became cheap, and Asia started buying. An American company rented two Tongan spaces for Russian satellites. A Hong Kong company owned by Chinese ministries took another. Tonga charged around two million dollars a year for each space, close to a fifth of the national budget.
Tonga had no rockets or satellites. It had vanilla, squash and one man who spotted untapped millions in the empty sky.
Sample sentences
Nobody in my family wants the old piano, so it is up for grabs.
Two tickets were left at the front desk and they sat there up for grabs all afternoon.
My neighbor put a box of books outside her door with a sign saying they were up for grabs.
Read More
Tonga and the Business of Real Estate in Outer Space (Neatorama)
Paper Satellites and the Free Use of Outer Space (NYU Globalex)
