Is there a way to remove orbital junk? Say, a satellite set to drift and...

T

tronequito

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You really don't have a CLUE.. do you?

Just HOW would you plan to stop an object traveling at, say, 15,000 MILES PER HOUR? At that speed, a chip of paint can penetrate 6 INCHES OF SOLID STEEL.
 
...with BIG magnets that can deorbit? After this Chinese ballistics test and this recent collision, it seems like a international effort to launch a ship, allow it to drift into one of the graveyard orbits, activate some kind of strong magnet (maybe retracting some kind of magnetic shielding to expose it) and then deorbiting the mass would help clear out old junk that's been left up there? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris
 
The strength of a magnet falls off very rapidly with distance. The magnets used in MRI scanners are some of the most powerful we have ever built, but 15 metres from an unscreened MRI scanner the magnetic field is negligible. You are talking about attracting objects over hundreds of kilometres.
 
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