Those people (commenting on that site) who think they can just clean it up are retarded. Seriously. That debris travels at such high speeds that a collision with a space station is extremely dangerous. And that's just with debris of a few inches wide. Catching it would just tear you apart. Sorry if I insulted anybody here, but it seriously is retarded.
Actually Aurora it's very possible to catch the debris. The speed of the debris isn't that important, what's important is the speed of the deris relative to whatever is catching it. The ISS and Satelites are moving at very high speeds just like the debris and we dock with them all the time. The reason the debris is problematic at all is because most of the time whatever we are worried about isn't moving anywhere close to the speed of the debris. If anybody actually puts in the energy to build something to catch the debris it is a pretty safe guess that they will also make sure that they move close enough to the speed of the debris to make sure they don't damage themselves in the process of catching it.
So how do you think it's possible to move out of safe orbit lanes, accellerate to an insane speed, (at least for orbit) get into exactly the same route as a piece of debris, and then catch it? Without being hit by other debris? Remember that it's much harder to make course corrections at that speed. Because you are going faster, a small adjustment makes a lot of difference. I can't imagine how they would plan on dodging other pieces while doing all this. And they have to do it 19.000 times! Even a single space maneuvre costs millions. Further, how would one remove the debris? Kick against it? Lol.
The reason no one cleans up the debris is because it is more cost effective to plan around it. However if I were to do it I would use sometihing similar to a shuttle that has a large expendable container in its cargo bay. The first part of that task would planning a course that allows for the collection of as much debris as possible with as little fuel as possible. Then after the debris is caught and placed into the container simply drag the container to point were it will fall and burn up in the atmosphere. Again the problem of removing the debris isn't one of abiliy, but one of cost.
Whatever. Even if it isn't to dangerous and easy to do, nobody will pay for it anyway. At least not until somebody gets hit and dies, because that's how screwed up decicion making works.
Like I said it's more cost effective to plan around the debris. Money is the main the decision making factor in this world, sad but ture.
I don't dump corpses in orbit around planets that are INHABITABED. Also LK, instead of dumping them where they would burn up, wouldn't it be more cost effective to bring it back to earth and recycle it?
Well i have a solution, but unless we perfect time and space maniuplation technology its nothing more then a pipe dream. Although we could shoot for shield geneators, but then we would need to find a effective replenishing engery source that would be able to evenly wrap around the ship and not give every radiation sickness.
