That’s how we can pay for the whole operation! Orbital racketeering.

”That’s a nice piece of stealthy debris you have there. It would be a shame if someone were to just… scoop it up.”

It’s like international waters. Anything goes. In three dimensions!

Implement a method to deal with debris and don't worry about concealed spy satellite. The entity behind it can of course complain but then have to explain why.

Thats a feature not a bug.

Well, HN had that story a week or so ago about US satellites that cruise around near-geosync orbit (IIRC) checking out the competition. Try to convince me that there's no funny stuff going on.

It's not that simple to vaporise smaller bits because you'll have to track them after breakup. At orbital velocities even a fleck of paint hits like a bullet so it's better to just keep it in one big piece.

We could link that with another comment "Though it seems many actors are reluctant on implementing something to capture space debris as this could open the doors for capturing more then just debris (as in foreign spy satellites and the like)." and sell this as "Remove debris AND foreign spy satellites. If you pay for this, we will leave your satellites intact."