Re: Now wasnt there some reagan-esque starwars stuff ?
The SDI equipment was supposed to have satellites in orbit to destroy stuff that wasn't in orbit, not the other way around. We have the technology to fire a laser at the junk from down here, but leaving issues of power and targeting aside, what's the advantage of doing that? It's likely to just split up the junk into smaller and more plentiful junk in approximately the same place, which doesn't really do a lot. The SDI suggestions were just trying to break missiles or change their trajectory, not induce the precision control necessary to redirect them, but that precision is more important when dealing with space junk.
The sticky material suggestion won't be feasible either. The junk isn't in one compact place. You'd need a truly massive glue ball to envelop even a few pieces of it. If you have a substance that acts as an adhesive and is really light, you could use it to change the orbit of individual pieces, but not to collect all of them (and getting that material near the piece would require a lot of fuel from the controlling satellite).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
