Are those space pants?

When I was a kid, I swear that I was taught that trash in space spun around and around until it got burned up in the sun. I figured that this was the future of garbage disposal. We would launch trash into space, opening up more land for housing, or food, or whatever would be there if there weren't a landfill; probably dirt.

So you can imagine, that when I learned that this is in fact not the case, that trash is revolving around our planet right now, I was quite distressed. I really believed that our planet was redeemable from this mess that we've put ourselves in. So now what? Well, our orbital trash has reached such an all-time high that now we (who we is, is a problem) need to act soon or the space junk will begin to cause problems in space. I can't figure out much more than that the international space station will be in danger. Now here is the bigger problem: who is allowed to deal with the trash in space? Who owns space to the extent that they can patrol it? And what if in the middle of the trash-compiling, or eliminating, someone else's satellite is damaged, and how do we know it wasn't damaged on purpose? Ack.

So in light of an earlier post on the ridiculousness of humans and recycling, I post this to let you know what's happening in space. Because if you're not current on space news, you're in trouble. Later in space news, we will discuss the wonder that is star death. Seriously.