Again, Space Station Has to Be Moved Out of The Way of Space Junk

Space magnets, and big nets with small nets. Or maybe some big electrostatic device to pull stuff in. I for one dont want some half molten multi-ton satellite smashing my house to pieces because an astronaut forgot to put away his pen.

i am not trying to get all nerdy, but to have a TRUE space presence we are going to need some sort of deflectors.
You see all these scf-fi games and movies and they have these ships just flying around, and GIANT GIANT space stations floating in space. Only a few even mention some sort of deflector. Mass effect, star trek. thats about it. a tiny screw moving fast enough could kill everyone on board the space station. We are not going to see space hotels unless they have 2 feet think steel armor plating. that not going to happen unless they make it on the moon or in zero g.

That's a very out dated picture

Remember when Bugs Bunny went to outer space, just use the ACME disintegration technique that the Martians used! Seriously though it's a shame that we humans don't care enough about planet Earth to take care of it. Space does not need to become our next landfill. I say if you can't bring it down then you can't send it up, problem solved!

Only one thing pops up in my head when i see this page...the movie wall-e or whatever its called.

is space the next dump now that Earth is full?!

Was the article’s purpose to inform us that space is full of junk or that the space station was successfully piloted by Russians?

The mechanics of how a piece of space debris could survive the extreme thermal shock of entry into and through the Earth’s atmosphere should be addressed in this article to assure those who don’t know that a pen will not fall from space and destroy their neighborhood

The shuttle that was used by NASA, up until the obama administration removed NASA’s ability to have a space program, has special “heat shield” tiles on it so that it could survive those extreme temperatures during entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

If only the Americans, would have decided to use their “bail out” money to create an endeavor to build and maintain a station in orbit. Perhaps a geo-synchronous station above their country so that they could inspect and service their space craft AND remove space junk left by their vehicles and satellites.

One could hope such collected junk would even be reused or recycled, some tool that have been “lost in space” cost millions of dollars, recovering those on a pass by may be financially friendly.

Unfortunately this conjecture is just that, and with no financial means and no political pressure, it would seem the American government has little incentive to accomplish a clean up of outer space.

This sounds like a great oppurtunity for some venture capitalist; collect old satalites and recycle their componets. There has got to be some pretty valuable metals in them, just a matter of figuring out a break even point... Maybe Sir Richard Branson will start dragging a net behind the new Virgin shuttles and recouping some of his investment capital ;)

While I suspect that it may be reasonable to collect actual satellites and some of the larger pieces of debris and park it somewhere, the simple fact that it would still be many objects in one place leads to the very real concern that anything that might hit this gathered pile would transfer it's energy to multiple objects, potentially causing a much greater problem. In that event, we'd have spent huge sums of money and effort to set ourselves back. I used to think that I'd like to see the mass we have all boosted up there recycled in space, maybe for bulk shielding; but now I think the various plans to de-orbit as much as possible is the all around better way. At least for now. The sprayed water idea looks like it may be very promising for smaller stuff. If we could keep the liquid fuel tank connected to the shuttle and put it in orbit, that might be a way to salvage. If that is possible, then I'd be very disappointed that we haven't been doing this all along. Our presence in space would have been 100 times more advanced than it is now; for zero extra dollars.