Overview

In the early years of the Space Age, mankind was concerned primarily with conquering space. Even getting there, let alone surviving there, was a challenge to his ingenuity and resolve. The process of placing a spacecraft in Earth orbit, or targeting a planetary body such as the Moon, was so difficult that almost any method was permissible in addressing that goal and there was little thought of any consequences that might arise from these actions.

Even when it had been proved with Sputnik 1 that it was possible to place a satellite in orbit, it remained an extremely difficult and dangerous task. The statistics make discouraging reading: from October 1957, 12 of the first 20 attempts to orbit a satellite failed; and as of the 40th attempt, 23 had been abject failures. Amazing though it seems today, at the time of the first manned spaceflights about 50% of space missions were failing for one reason or another: either the rockets could not get their payloads into orbit, or the recovery systems could not get them down again. This made manned spaceflight an extremely risky business on both counts.

No one had the time or the inclination to consider the effect that hardware abandoned in orbit might have in the future. If the hardware had completed its job, or not worked in the first place, it was forgotten. As with many aspects of Earth-bound pollution, it has taken time to recognize the damaging effects of what we know now as "space debris."