[baobrien]

Things don't really leave the gravitational pull of the earth -- it's still on the order of 9m/s^2 in low earth orbit. In order for things to stay up, they've got to be moving around 9 km/s sideways -- essentially constantly falling towards earth, but going fast enough sideways to miss.

The issue is that at those speeds, anything bigger than a fleck of paint hitting anything else will turn both things into a bunch of tiny chunks. See [1] for an example of two satellites colliding.

The big fear is that if you get enough stuff up there, even if you control most of it, one collision would be enough to trigger a chain reaction. [2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

[ovrdrv3]

Thanks for the reply, I definitely didn't think of this point.