Well it gives them something to spend their money on final. Why improve society when you can build a rocket?

yea people should think about those things.....


why do people change their names? because you want to rub it in on me? because my name screwed up when i did it?...............

Wolfy, I thought they were getting yours fixed?

About time the space programs become decentralized. However, this will create a huge issue of coordination, I believe.

Wisdom comes with age. But sometimes age comes alone...

I don't think this is going to be a big issue because space is so big. How many satelites are up there? Maybe a thousand. Let's be conservative and say it's ten thousand. If they were all in the exact same low orbit that would average out to about 1 every half mile. The circumfrence of a geosynchonous orbit is around 120,000 miles. You could put a million satelites up there and they could all be no closer than 500 feet to each other.
I'm not saying there's no danger from space junk. Even though it might be improbable that two satelites would collide by accident it's still possible. If two satelites in low orbit were going in opposite directions and they did a head-on they would hit each other at 32,000 miles an hour and probably both be turned to dust. If the danger of collisions ever gets appreciable then it could be mandated that any satelite launched would have necesary fuel to de-orbit when it reaches the end of it's mission.

Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the universe!!

For as far as I understand it it's not the sattelites and stuff that matters, it is the really small particles like screws, bolts, or even millimeter-sized paint particles.
It doesn't take something big to punch a hole in the hull of for example the ISS station, jsut 1 small fragment less then a millimeter in diameter is enough. It's not he size that matters it's the speed, and most objects our there are moving with hundreds of metres a second.
The big problem is that there are millions, if not billions of those small scrap particles out there wich are impossible to track due to their small size, and just 1 of them can be fatal. Sure the hole will be small and it will take a considerable amout of time before all air would be sucked out so there's more then enough time to plug the hole, but a station is big and if you cannot find it then even a hole less then a millimeter in size could force an evacuation of the station.