Space Pollution

--- Ian Woollard wrote:
> A 'few' rocks... that might work as few tends to infinity. LEO
> has only about the same volume as the atmosphere. 'Polluting'
> that isn't too hard when your junk travels at 7km/s, but
> as you go higher, it becomes proportionately harder.

It's quite possible that space junk will have a higher concentration around the
orbits of settlements and where spacecraft will be

> The main reason the earth gets hit by asteroids is because it
> has a lot of gravity.

It's also a much larger target then our spacecraft.

> You won't. See the above quote. Actually aeroplanes have quite
> a hard time managing to collide with each other in the
> atmosphere. Its only because they get herded into airlanes and
> because they have to land at the same airports that they ever
> impact.

There'll be a lot of ships around pretty much any settlement, particulary the
Island Threes. There could also be a lot of junk around there.

> Anything gaseous or really fine powder just blows out of the
> solar system. The solar wind is pretty fast, and takes
> anything small with it. Big things are another matter.

Whcih is why we should use propulsion systems that exhaust a gas or very fine
powder. It could also have the other advantage of increasing Isp if you do it
that way.