Low Earth Orbit Junk Yard Nearly Full

vlado4 writes "The New York Times has up an article on the amount of space junk in Earth Orbit. According to NASA officials, the amount of stuff we've put into LEO is at critical levels. Additionally they have great graphics of the nearly 1000 new pieces resulting from testing the new Chinese anti-satellite weapon, as well as the damage to Hubble's solar array. The litter is now so bad that, even if space-faring nations refrained from further interference, collisions would continue to create more clutter just above our atmosphere. Space debris appear to be a difficult problem to deal with and may hinder future space exploration."

Comments

Re:No problem

[Sebastopol]

Also, it is difficult to say that space is "full" of junk. The LEO area has such a large volume that even hundres of millions of junk particles at a uniform distribution still means they are all many kilometers apart. So what is "full"?

This is the kind of important question people who see humans as having no limits need to answer:

* How many people on earth is TOO many?

* How much pollution in the air is TOO much?

* How many bad air days are TOO many?

* How little oil left is TOO little?

* How warm is TOO warm before you believe global warming?

* How much nuclear fallout from nuking Iraq/Iran is TOO much nuclear fallout?

It's hard to not be partisan with these q's, because in my experience, the god fearing republicans think no limits exist on the above questions. I'm not calling you a GFR, I'm just saying the important focus for these issues is not an absolute number, but "where do you draw the line"? The same goes for LEO garbage. Yes, the volume of LEO is colossal compared to the surface of the earth, but where does one draw the line???

IMO, if scientists can project the rate of fillup and the probability of destroying important satellites or making space travel impossible or becoming detrimental to humanity, we should listen to them, but there seems like little we can do: we haven't done anything about ANY of the issues listed above that have far more impact on humanity, what makes us think we can affect LEO decisions?