How A Problem Grows with Time

Most people know that when you have a problem and don't fix it, it grows with time. Well, the same applies to space junk.

Here's a blog post by Eric Drexler on the problem of space junk:

The Space Debris Collision Problem

by Eric Drexler on March 3, 2009

A few weeks ago, a US and Russian satellite collided, spreading debris around near-Earth space. The video below shows an animation based on a state-of-the-art model of the event and the resulting clouds of ultra-high-speed projectiles. Collisions like this can be expected to occur with increasing frequency. ...


Every collision creates debris that raises the frequency of further collisions. The graph above from a 2006 article in Science, Risks in Space from Orbiting Debris, shows the projected increase of 10 cm+ space debris according to a model that was run with the optimistic assumption that nothing has been launched since 2004, and that this complete moratorium on adding junk in orbit will continue forever. This ends the steep climb, but doesn’t reverse it. ...

According to the Science article, no one has a good idea what to do about this problem. Actually collecting the stuff would require, for example, the ability to produce many thousands of small, inexpensive, automated spacecraft at low cost. (So many problems, when examined from the right angle of view, hinge on manufacturing — the ability to make things.)