This is an interesting NY Times article (via Slashdot) about how humans have successfully expanded on their millenia-long project to trash the Earth to now include the trashing of space around the Earth. Apparently we have now reached a stage where there is so much crap floating around in low Earth orbit that it is a threat to future space missions.
For example, the Hubble Space Telescope was hit over 700,000 times by man made debris up to 2002. Hardly the ideal way to treat one of the most advanced pieces of scientific equipment ever built. These graphics are particularly interesting in showing just how much rubbish is in orbit at the moment, and how much can be produced by a single event such as the recent Chinese anti-satellite missile test.
Sometimes I think the surest sign intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
- Calvin and Hobbes
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