There's a lot of crap up there in orbit. Like, seriously, a lot, and it's becoming a problem. This concept for a space debris collection and recycling ship from artist Vaughan Ling shows one potential way of taking care of all the junk.
When two pieces of space junk come together they make lots of new little baby pieces of space junk, which might sound all cute and romantic, except that if one of them runs into your space station, it's gonna blow a good sized hole in it. At some point, there's going to be enough stuff flying around up there that a chain reaction of collisions could take place, creating so much debris that Earth orbit will end up unusable.
Before this happens, it might be a good idea to start collecting all of the bigger pieces of junk using a ship like this. Vaughan Ling's conceptual design uses VASIMR plasma rockets, solar sails, deployable balloons, aerogel nets, and ground based lasers to round up and then recycle spent rocket casings and dead satellites.
The Space Debris Collector is one of those concepts that's got just enough reality behind it to make it extra cool, so don't miss the gallery below for more images. PHOTOS
Vaughan Ling, via io9
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