In article ,
Big John wrote:


If they keep on improving lasers, I can envision a number of ground
stations (or aircraft or satellite mounted) that will burn up the junk
in orbit.


Uh -- "burn up", in space, without any oxygen around?

Melt and then vaporize, maybe -- though the vaporized mass might just
reclump into a small moonlet.

And, burned or vaporized, the same amount of mass is still orbiting
around, in a somewhat larger cloud maybe, but at the same speed. Not
sure whether that would be better or worse . . .

Interesting technical problem.