It began, as many imperial maneuvers do, with panic in the air and profit in the margins. A novel virus swept the world and, with it, came a torrent of emergency declarations, corporate alliances, and shimmering press briefings. There were hashtags. There were televised tears. There were podiums flanked by flags, men in suits with grim expressions, and charts that looked like heartbeat monitors wired to a dying civilization.

In a triumph of commercial spectacle over ecological wisdom, the upper atmosphere has become the latest frontier of human waste. Once a realm of stars, silence, and reverence, low Earth orbit is now an expanding scrapyard for satellites, rocket debris, and metals burned into the sky—all celebrated as progress by billionaires and bureaucrats whose reverence lies not in wonder, but in Wall Street portfolios and Pentagon budgets.