Dual use SPS

> Blasting space debris (to eliminate it) with lasers powered by SPS would
> likely make more than it eliminates by destroying operational weathersats,
> landsats, etc. One could know where the beam was going, and so not shoot
> when it might hit something else beyond the target, but after the beam hit a
> metal surface on the debris, the debris would reflect some of it to who
> knows where.

Unlikely to be an issue IMO. Very few surfaces are perfect plane
mirrors- and only perfect mirrors can scatter the laser in any
harmful way. Plus, the debris rotates so won't point in any
particular direction for long at all.

> There is not that much orbiting debris anyway compared to what
> nature has passing into the upper atmosphere, several tons every day.

Do you have a citation for this claim? I believe that man-made
space junk is a huge problem because it is in orbit; and it self
amplifies due to a process called spalling. Very little natural
debris will be in orbit, because there's few mechanisms that can
put it there, and it decays in a few hundred years at most.