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ISS Fender Bender
wjsteele writes "Seems that the Space Station has had a minor fender bender. Sounds kind of scary... being in a space craft and hearing metal crunching (like an aluminum can.) Apparently some 'Minor' space debris struck the station around 2:30am this morning, while the astronauts were eating their wheaties." Update: 11/27 16:31 GMT by M : Looks like an experiment may be to blame.
space debris' orbitals are pretty easily predictable, why not shoot them out of orbit with a projectile?
Because the idea is to have less crap floating around in Earth orbit, not more. If the collision between one of your projectiles and its target is of sufficient force, the debris will become a scattered cloud of fragments. Something the size of the fingernail on your pinky put a crater into the windshield of one of the shuttles, do we really want a cloud of them up there?
The laser beam idea might be feasible, but then again, maybe not. SDI turned out to be a lot harder to create than everyone thought, and that dealt with large moving objects traveling predictable paths. Plus you've got to worry about something that you don't want to hit being in the line of fire, which is slightly less of a concern when what you want to hit are nuclear warheads heading for your cities.
Call me crazy, but I think the idea of a few autonomous space trash trucks cruising around up there and picking up errant junk seems like the way to go, once technology has advanced sufficiently to permit it.
~Philly