We really are a messy species, littering abundantly regardless of the effects. It’s not just the teens pulling out of the drive through window and later tossing the bag out the window.

This particular piece of junk comes from one of the hard ones: what do you do with the spent booster rockets, mounting hardware, etc? The early stages fall to earth, but a lot of the final stages achieve orbit. The number one source of current junk is a couple final stage rockets that blew up after reaching orbit. That is the source for the particular bit of junk that threatened the station. They were not intended to blow up, but they did.

Current designs use depletion burns to reduce spent booster lifespan but there are still issues. For example, those exploding bolts used to separate the satellite from the booster also spray junk. Alternative technologies that have the same strength and reliability are needed.

Junk per launch is way down, but still needs work.

It’s interesting to me that Earth, at about 4.5 billion years old, is about a third the age of the universe itself.

Also that nearly all the ranking stars (those with magnitudes of 1 to 3) are far brighter than average, and short-lived. None, therefore, would support life, given our current assumptions.

Also that the Sun, a yellow dwarf, is still brighter than 85% of the other stars in the Milky Way.

And that the Milky Way has been around since not long after the Big Bang.

Just killing time here at Logan before flying to Chicago and Austin.

You’re right about the junk in orbit. Externalized costs are always a problem, which is why we have pollution everywhere.