Space Debris: Is It a Crisis?

Is this problem solvable by something similar to https://theoceancleanup.com/ ? The search space is much larger, granted, but once you figure out a way to efficiently spot a piece of debris, you could use a <insert name of magical device here> to bump the debris towards outer space?

It's probably easier and better to push it down or try to evaporate it with laser from a comfortable distance.

The problem is solvable by stopping people like Musk from putting 42,000 satellites in space.

Especially when the problem he is solving i.e. global access to internet is already solved just not to the level we would want it.

So as a society we have to ask what is more important: watching Netflix on a yacht or having the ability to someday explore the universe.

Generally the material goes the other way nowadays. In Low Earth Orbit debris even deorbits itself within a few years (or few decades for the higher reaches) through natural orbital decline taking it into the atmosphere where it burns up.

There are startups and research programmes working on Active Debris Removal using everything from nets to lasers to destroy or divert debris (as well as larger tugs to remove whole satellites). It's just an expensive problem to solve, and if Kessler Syndrome were to occur, you wouldn't necessarily want to pause space launches to wait for orbits to be cleared, especially not if you'd just lost critical satellites...

No. Removing space debris is more like snatching bullets from mid-air than picking up trash.

Or we could just make a rule that all large constellations have to be put into an orbit under 500 miles where Kessler isn't really an issue and we could have our cake and eat it too.

Pushing things deeper into space is tricky because you need to increase both sides of the orbit. It's more common to push things down (or increase atmospheric drag) so that even if the top of the orbit initially stays in a problematic area, the low side gets lower and lower until the object is deornited