

Star wars: a new hope for arms control in space  - hazmattron
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727682.400-star-wars-a-new-hope-for-arms-control-in-space.html

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Rhapso
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly
hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the
road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space" -Douglas Adams

I'm not sure if I buy this "earth orbit will be dangerously crowded with
debris" business there is a LOT of room up there, the volume of space we are
discussing is bigger then the volume of earth, and even if there is a high
density of debris most of it is small bits of metal at orbital velocities,
which would likely cause similar danger to micrometeorites: which are an
engineering problem we need to solve anyway (the whole pray it does not hit
anything that goes boom and throw a patch over it fast plan is not acceptable)

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c1sc0
The problem is that collisions between larger pieces of debris can generate
smaller pieces, more collisions, etc ... the potential for a chain reaction
should not be dismissed so lighly because the consequences of humanity not
being able to get into space are pretty far-reaching.

