You can see the effect of atmospheric drag and resulting decay for LEO objects. And how catastrophic collisions are.
Edit: And original source https://mads-hatters.github.io/
This made curious how much more space you get, so I did some maths.
According to Wikipedia, LEO is basically anything below 2000KM, so we'll call 1000KM the average. Geostationary orbit is apparently 35,786KM above the surface (at the equator. The earth is not a perfect sphere).
The diameter of the earth is 12,742KM, making the circumference of this LEO ~43,171KM
Let's say there's 10KM between every piece of debris, meaning you can fit 4317 piece of debris into this orbit. (that's not how it really works of course, this is just an arbitary number to use as a comparison).
At geostationary orbit, the circumference is ~152,000KM, meaning the same 4317 pieces of debris would now be ~35KM apart instead. Or you could fit 15,200 peices of debris in, still spaced 10KM apart. Or you could say you have ~252% more space at the higher orbit.
I have to object the phrasing debris blanket here though. If you compare low orbit (where most of this stuff is) to the combined surface areas of our oceans, it's larger because it also includes the surface area of our landmass and you have to take into account the larger sphere radius of an extra 100km.
Just driving the point home that it's a pretty big surface area if you assume it's effectively 2D. Which of course it isn't. If you then add the third dimension with say a couple of hundred kilometer that make up low earth orbit, the probability of hitting anything drops pretty low. That stuff should be extremely rare.
There's a bit of debris in orbit. Some of the larger bits, we track. Of course if you do hit something, the speed differences mean a collision can do some real damage.
Compared to naturally occurring stuff (meteorites, space rocks, etc) it's not that much of an additional risk. ISS does get hit by that stuff occasionally. A bigger rock (pebble sized) could do a lot of damage. I don't think that has happened yet. It's a non zero risk but an acceptable one.
So you'd have to think of the debris as miles long strands, and suddenly it seems quite likely to hit one.
Do you have a citation for this?
[1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9482/how-long-woul...
Higher orbits would last essentially forever though.
These tiny objects aren't that disastrous either. From what I understand, the insulating blankets destroy them and dissipate their energy, limiting damage to the underlying structure.
I’m fairly hopeful that it is a problem with a solution once there is adequate motivation.
Most spacefaring countries have adopted a rule of getting low-earth-orbit objects out of space within 25 years of their mission's end-of-life.
Some (though relatively few) objects are in high orbits. These will take millenia - the good news is that they are also relatively slow, which makes them easier to avoid.
And then we have people shooting their sportscar into space on an orbit that will last virtually indefinitely.
This is not true. Higher orbits do circle the earth less frequently...but that is not because they are slower, but because they have further to go. In fact, the higher your orbit, the faster you are going.