If 20% of their satellites become space junk, and they are putting a lot up there, they are going a long way towards making the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome go from a theoretical possibility to a depressing reality.
The sad part is that, since they already planned on a high failure rate, they would still be OK. It is just everyone else who would be hosed.
It's possible that even a 'failed' device by their mission standards is still capable of sufficient manoeuvring to either push itself into a stable salvageable orbit, or do a controlled burn-up reentry.
I can think of a whole bunch of things that could go wrong which leave them unable to perform their primary objective, but still serve 'light duties' doing something else.
In addition, I don't know how well we have the current debris identified and tracked, but to my entirely uneducated mind, a bunch of cheap mini-telescope sats might be quite useful in actually figuring out what we have to deal with.
And, should they happen to be completely successful in their long term goals, I like to think that $20E12 in materials just waiting to be collected from a lagrange point or whatever would provide some serious impetus for solving the debris issue. :)
> More than 21,000 orbital debris larger than 10 cm are known to exist. The estimated population of particles between 1 and 10 cm in diameter is approximately 500,000. The number of particles smaller than 1 cm exceeds 100 million.
Time for a space mining (/scavenging) company. Mine (/scavenge) the broken space ships and bring the costly metals back home. Should be less risky, good returns venture for sure..
Sounds more valuable to keep those costly materials up there, but bunch them together so they can be used as raw materials to build those automated factories?
Space companies need regulations for that, there must be a high penalty for space waste. They could build a collector drone for failed devices. There just has to be an incentive to do something about it and they find a relatively cheap solution. Bad PR is not enough.
They need something similar to UNCLOS, but with Space instead of Sea.
For the Antarctica do waste removal agreements already exist.
When you think about it, for almost every case we have something comparable on earth.
The sad part is that, since they already planned on a high failure rate, they would still be OK. It is just everyone else who would be hosed.