It's weird....

[conuly]

But when I think about the fact that the Mars Rover and those footprints on the moon will be in those places long after everybody's dead and gone, I feel a moderate sense of comfort about this... which is the exact opposite of what I feel when I think about the fact that a garbage bag full of glitter will also be wherever it was dumped long after the people who threw it out are all dead and gone.

And logically speaking I ought to feel the same way about space litter as I do about terrestrial litter, but I just can't do it.

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Comments

[dark_phoenix54]

The space litter (except for the car that moron Musk sent off into space) will eventually fall out of orbit and burn up before most of it hits ground. So I'm not too worried about it, as long as we don't keep putting more and more of it up there (once again, I look evilly at our Lord and Master Musk)

[conuly]

Nitpick, everything I mentioned as space litter is on Mars or the Moon and not in orbit.

[siliconshaman]

Musk's car will eventually end up on Mars, or possibly Earth.... or just possibly splatted against an asteroid. It's in an eccentric Earth-Mars crossing orbit that loops out as far as the edges of the asteroid belt. You can find exact details here.

Probably won't be much left of it at that point though.