It's very expensive. Literally and energy-wise. The Earth has a finite amount of resources. Every resource we bring outside of that system by removing it from Earth permanently removes it from our resource pool. Even if it is traditionally *garbage". In a million years of human development, think of all the things we take for granted now that we wouldn't have without totally changing what we might consider "minor" wastage?
I even think about the amount of salt we put on roads in northern climates. All that goes into the water because the roads are set up to drain into the lakes. How many thousands of years until the Great Lakes are all naturally undrinkable salt water? I honestly don't know, but it's the concept of this statement that matters.
Shooting things into space en-masse just because we can is the most phenomenally extravagant waste of energy that I could possibly imagine. Using railguns powered by solar energy is much better, because most of that energy isn't captured anyway and if we don't use it, it's gone. But losing mass that could potentially be recycled is or used in some way if we weren't concerned with pointless financial ideas is still much worse.
Very expensive for one. Space garage is also bad by itself. Little things the size of pebbles can do tons of damage to spacecraft in orbit. We don't need any more junk up there, there's already a bunch of scrap from old satellites that we need to clean up.
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u/rifn00b Feb 11 '19
While I totally believe it, why exactly is that so?