OMG! Let's watch TV!!

[Dee_Ann]

Flickr Photo Download: Space: The Final Junkyard - Infrastructure

 

[Inno]

Sooooo.............if most space debris is located 885-1000km from the earth and geosyncronous satellites sit at 35,786km then it is entirely possible for a now defunct satellite that once brought entertainment to the world to be the very thing that prevents entertainment from being brought to parts of the world.
I say bring it all back in or send it waaaay far away.............that graphical depiction is very shocking. We are essentially doing to the space around our planet what we are doing to the planet itself. And a lot of it is simply in the name of entertainment..........what a wasteful, careless bunch we have become.

 

[ZetaMale]

They probably expect the orbits to eventually decay to where the stuff will burn up in the atmosphere.

 

[Dee_Ann]

I don't know why they don't just push it all off into the sun once it's used up/broken.
I mean really, what could that hurt?

 

[Jim S.]

They'd have to launch it with enough extra fuel to get it moving in the direction of the sun, which would be quite a bit since the earth is moving at a right angle to that.