Since Sputnik 1 kicked off the space age in 1957, humans have left millions of pieces of used rockets, dead satellites and other detritus in orbit. Few people paid much attention to warnings about junk engulfing Earth, a dire future depicted in Walt Disney Co.’s 2008 Pixar classic Wall-E.
That’s changed as the proliferation of satellites has thrust the problem to the top of the space agenda.
“Rocket science is already hard, but throw in a bunch of litter traveling at 7.5 kilometers per second and it gets a lot harder,” said Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow for LeoLabs. And with so many large, uncontrolled objects in orbit, the probability of unintentional collisions is increasing.
“It’s like rolling the dice over and over again: At some point they come up snake eyes,” he said. “Eventually something bad is going to happen.”
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Shouldn’t it all be recycled? It costs a fortune to get solid metal into space, and there’s some just floating around out there. Could a metal foundry be built in space?
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*From Bloomberg News reporter* [*Bruce Einhorn*](https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/APy3oDDMUf0/bruce-einhorn)*:*
Since Sputnik 1 kicked off the space age in 1957, humans have left millions of pieces of used rockets, dead satellites and other detritus in orbit. Few people paid much attention to warnings about junk engulfing Earth, a dire future depicted in Walt Disney Co.’s 2008 Pixar classic Wall-E.
That’s changed as the proliferation of satellites has thrust the problem to the top of the space agenda.
“Rocket science is already hard, but throw in a bunch of litter traveling at 7.5 kilometers per second and it gets a lot harder,” said Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow for LeoLabs. And with so many large, uncontrolled objects in orbit, the probability of unintentional collisions is increasing.
“It’s like rolling the dice over and over again: At some point they come up snake eyes,” he said. “Eventually something bad is going to happen.”
Shouldn’t it all be recycled? It costs a fortune to get solid metal into space, and there’s some just floating around out there. Could a metal foundry be built in space?