In ninth grade, I wrote a term paper for English that was titled “The quest to rid space of earth garbage“. I used visuals from a video game (Wing Commander) to record a scene demonstrating a space battle.
The description of the scenario was that Aliens had to send spacecraft to earths proximity that would eliminate the trash that we had managed to get out of orbit. This trash was causing issues in other solar systems so Aliens were showing up around earth to eliminate the problem at the source. This resulted in battles between earth crafts and alien crafts as the Aliens were seen as potentially invading.
Part of the description also included, for example, the way that the spacecraft were constructed. The outer shell of spacecraft had an electrode that would create the shield around the spacecraft, so as to be a protective force that could help it avoid damage from either debris or fire power from other spacecraft. This was a science fiction based term paper that we had to write for ninth grade. It seems to have held some prognostic power as we are seeing an increasing amount of human created stuff accumulating in outer-space.
An observation by ChatGPT for modification to the content:
Back in 1992 I imagined orbit filled with trash — today scientists warn that accumulated debris could cascade into a barrier that imperils satellites and future missions (Kessler syndrome).
Leave a Reply