Reducing 55,000 satellites without breaking civilisation

One of our core constraints at CERN: imagine a planet with 55,000 satellites. Now reduce that number by ~60% — without collapsing navigation systems, climate monitoring, disaster warning or global communication.
We had to prioritise, so we built a tier-based model:
- Tier 1 — must be preserved
- Tier 2 — can be reduced
- Tier 3 — can be heavily cut
It forced us to confront uncomfortable questions about who loses access, and which systems come first. Space infrastructure is not just engineering — it's social architecture. And at CERN, we had to defend our trade-offs.
