Basically, this satellite need to joint the orbit and velocity of it's target. It seem a lot of energy to remove "one" debris. If something need to be done, wouldn't a freaking big net or something be better?

Sure it's still very polluted. But to be honest, any pollution is "too much" pollution don't you agree?

C'mon I'm not killing any buzz. I love that map and I've even added it to my bookmark.

And I know how dangerous those debris are. Some of those debris top 10 km/s (36 000 km/h) and if're you're heading the other way...well you get the picture.

My point was about the misconception of space pollution. Normal folk imagine we're going to end up like that scene in Wall-E where a rocket have to pass through a wall of debris to leave earth orbit. It's a huge additional challenge for all space mission but we're handling it quite well so far. Moreover, if we're more careful about making debris for the next decade, most of them will disappear by themselves (IFAIK, orbit need to be over 2000 km to be considered completely stable, but maybe there's a glitch in my memory)

Of course.

As I said, the map is awesome and really useful. Sadly, my point is that most of the people that are going to check will do so only to see how "polluted" space is.

While the map is quite awesome, I'm quite sure we'll see a lot of "news" bashing about how "polluted" our space is. After all, if I show this screenshot to anyone, most people will assume our space is really polluted (Wall-E style) : http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-...

Truth is, the dot on the map are far from accurate in size (if it was the case, the "debris" would be ~100km in size). Furthermore, most of those debris will eventually deorbit and reenter the earth atmosphere in the next decade.

Yeah...fascinating world really. But it's not how things works.

You don't have to look far in history to see that. before the US became the clear world leader, it was a time of war and conflict almost everywhere in the world. In fact, just in the last decade, with less than 5% of the world population in conflict, we are living during the most peaceful time in history (counter-intuitive, I know).

Maybe, one time, the humanity will change enough so all armies will be dismantled. But, for now, we need hat the US stay the clear leader for a little more longer.

I'm quite sure the military said the same thing to Churchill when they showed him the plan for the HMS Prince of Wales and as I said, in the past battleship were equipped for powerful close encounter that worked well...until a new technology (aircraft carrier) make them irrelevant. You don't see much battleship these day.

My point is, even if we may see a few dogfight if a war erupt, will it still be a relevant factor in that conflict? Because, as for now, the Dogfighting capability of fighters seem to be less than 0.01% of total uses.

Yeah....I've saw the Vietnam example time and time again...but it's closest to WW2 than today (1954-1975). It's already 40 years ago.

The closest Dogfighting recorded is in 1999 during the Balkans conflict, but it was 5 untrained pilot from Yugoslav Air Force again the US. Not what I would consider a decent reference.

Unlike Fallout's motto, war changes.

If a war were to break up, is Dogfighting really "the" efficient way to take care of fighter? With all new modern weaponry (AAM, SAM, laser etc.) I'm not completely sure if this feature is still relevant in modern time.

I mean, the british may had the most advanced battleship of its time during WW2, they still got utterly destroyed by aircraft carrier.

I'm interested and curious since this was modded 4-Insightful. How exactly the falcon 1 "sucked hard"? Can you elaborate?