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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

If anybody is interested in some fiction around this topic, there's a pretty good Japanese Manga/Anime series called Planetes that revolves around a group of "space janitors" who have to clean up space junk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

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Also Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, for an extreme space junk problem after the moon mysteriously breaks apart.

Both of those and others are mentioned here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

That novel is a work of a legend. Especially, the future part. Ecen Christopher nolan won't be able to do justice to this novel.(maybe he could)

It appears Ron Howard will make an attempt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves#Film_adaptation

I've thought a lot about how Seveneves could be adapted, and man ... it's going to be a tough thing to pull off. A movie trilogy might be able to cover half of it. Were I to do it myself, I'd probably go for a three-season TV series, with each season being one of the parts of the novel. I have no doubt that there's a ton that can be cut from an adaptation, but I'd be hard pressed to cut much, personally. I'm very bearish on any potential adaptation to a single film, as much as I'd love to see one happen.

Whoever attempts it should try soon because then the people that Stephenson actually modeled his characters after could play the roles in the film/TV series. For instance, one of the characters in the first part of the book is obviously modeled on Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

yeah. Even that head of rocket company seems to be a bit inspired by Blue Origins/SpaceX. Neal has worked for Blue Origins in some capacity. Also, TV series would be much better because it's spread over a number of episodes giving a sense of time.

Has his writing style improved since Snow Crash and prior works? I don't think I can handle slogging through another Stephenson novel.

I would say Seveneves was more science focused than Snow Crash, which made it a better fit for his style. If the science bits don't do anything for you, I mean, ...

Well, i haven't read Snow Crash. I read about it on wiki and decided to skip it. But i admit, while I was reading i got bored in between because pace had slowed down and then I skipped a few dozen pages , read a few lines and skipped way more and read more because wanted to know about the end as I was becoming really impatient. Anyways after reaching the end, i felt guilty that I skipped through a lot. A few days later I started reading again from the point I began skipping and in the later parts , i got to know that I had misunderstood some parts while skipping, so it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Also, some space stuff would have been better explained with a rough diagram. I guess, I got bored in between because I was reading a novel after a really long time. also, I got to know about Neal and this novel via Bill Gates' summer reading list a few years ago.

I'm posting to second this. It is a genuinely well-done show, and the creator made it a point to be as accurate as the plot allows regarding orbital mechanics, ablation cascades, and the like. It is well worth a watch.

Yep, the comics Planetes 1 and 2 are brilliant reads!

I never read the manga but the anime is great!

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