Thread:Comments:Out of space in outer space: Special report on NASA's 'space junk' plans/recycling the "space junk"

Shouldn't "space junk" be reused and recycled? It's difficult and expensive, to launch things from earth up out of the "gravity well" into orbit. It is wasteful to burn such stuff up in the atmosphere. With some focused heat and specialized tools the metallic space junk can be reformed up there into something for the space station, rather than spending millions of dollars to launch new stuff.

Separating an existing object into its component elements is hard, and the tools to do this are not there yet, but metallic capture can keep the space junk contained until someday the tools can be invented and put up there. Presumably the most-necessary tools can be put into a form that is lighter and cheaper than all this space junk itself. And creative tinkerers, or robots controlled by them, will be up there eventually to do the work. They'll need to be there if we are going to use the moon and space rocks to mine and build stuff in the future.

Yet the reports don't seem to mention this possibility, nor do commentators. What am I missing? Econterms (talk) 03:28, 12 September 2011 (UTC)