If we're so smart, why don't we invent something to clean up the space debris?

[Ted King]

The notion hit me that maybe we could use lasers to vaporize a lot of the stuff up there, so I did a Google search. From what I gather, it's probably not practical to build a system that can completely vaporize much of the debris, but lasers could feasibly be built that had the capacity to "nudge" the debris out of the way of potential collisions with spacecraft we want to protect. Another article mentioned that by heating just a small part of a piece of debris with a laser, they could slow it down enough (turning that small part into a gas that propels the remainder) to cause it to enter the atmosphere.

Here's a couple of the articles:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/1...unk-laser/

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110315/f...1.161.html


Of course, one of the obvious problems is that such a laser could be used as a weapon. Maybe that could be taken care of by having an international consortium of all spacefaring nations build and oversee the lasers.