I guess I'll take this time to shill for the mid-'00s TV show Planetes, which is basically about exactly this; cleaning up orbital debris in order to maintain safe space travel.
I've been meaning to watch Planetes, because Vinland Saga is honestly mind-blowing. One of the best storytelling in Anime of all time, second only to Cowboy Bebop of course.
The story is slightly different in the Planetes anime but reputedly good, I've only read the manga for that one. The manga collection for Planetes is relatively short, only a single large book versus the many volumes of Vinland Saga.
There’s also an interesting kurzgesagt video that says that if we reach some threshold we’ll never be able to launch anything in space anymore. Quite depressing :(
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The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,[1][2] collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions.[3] In 2009 Kessler wrote that modeling results had concluded that the debris environment was already unstable, "such that any attempt to achieve a growth-free small debris environment by eliminating sources of past debris will likely fail because fragments from future collisions will be generated faster than atmospheric drag will remove them".[4] One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.[3]
""" -- Summary from Wikipedia's article.
Also from that article "One technology proposed to help deal with fragments from 1 to 10 cm (1⁄2 to 4 in) in size is the laser broom, a proposed multimegawatt land-based laser that could deorbit debris: the side of the debris hit by the laser would ablate and create a thrust that would change the eccentricity of the remains of the fragment until it would re-enter and be destroyed harmlessly.[32]"
A thought likely independently re-invented by anyone (myself included) who's seen science fiction where solar sail mirrors are used as parabolic solar reflectors often used by super villains.
>There’s also an interesting kurzgesagt video that says that if we reach some threshold we’ll never be able to launch anything in space anymore.
That's called Kessler Syndrome, but it's not as bad as you portray. It doesn't mean we'll never be able to launch anything any more; it just means we won't be able to launch anything for a few centuries or so. All orbital debris will eventually fall into the atmosphere and burn up, so we just have to wait.
