First, a lot of space debris is small. I'm talking like flecks of paint. That's an issue at high speed and this has hit the ISS [1].

Obviously there's the conservation of momentum to deal with. That fleck of paint has a decent amount of momentum but that's fairly easily absorbed by a couple of tons of material fixed to an otherwise rigid body.

You'd probably attach it via cables and if, somehow, enough momentum was delivered to that "paddle" that it would tear off the cables would just let it go.

If the paddle is fixed to the ring and is let go, it's just going to fall to Earth even with any added momentum, in which case it'll burn up in the atmosphere.

The more dangerous debris is larger stuff. Like there are dead parts of rockets, even smaller stuff like bolts. These pose extra challenges but a lot of the same principles apply.

[1]: https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0513/Space-debris-dan....

I thought larger parts aren't as big of an issue in the majority of cases as most orbits aren't stable and they'll eventually fall to earth or be ejected into outer space.

Maybe not hunting nets per say, maybe just a huge trawling net, or some sort of trawling-foam since we're in space. As high velocity objects begin to hit it, the foam will gain speed, but overtime, with presumably random speed-object collisions, the foam and its captured contents should have their speed reduced to 0 and fall. Doesn't need to be in foam or net form, but it does need to be a massive-entanglement-object, or MEO for short.

I'm probably under thinking this, but wouldn't the overall momentum of the debris be conserved so you'd have a bias in debris velocity in whatever direction the original objects were orbiting (presumably not random)?

I would assume that as the debris cloud became more biased in one direction, it would be more and more likely to encounter new debris coming in a different direction.

This would be a really fun simulation to run

At least at geosynchronous altitude it seems like it would be significantly biased in the direction of Earth's rotation, especially along geostationary orbit.

Maybe use lasers to ablate material on the debris, creating propulsion? Creates liability, though..

Splitting small things into slightly smaller things would only compound the problem

if you are moving with the almost the same speed and in the same direction as the debris, then there is a very small impact.

I imagine orbital velocities of debris is all over the place. It sound like you would need a magic source of thrust for all that delta-v to match orbits and whatnot.

The closest we have to that would probably be solar sails. Considering that cleanup usually isn't time sensitive it could be a very cheap and effective solution.

they might try out solar powered ion engines. Deep space one is powered by an engine of this type, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_electric_propulsion

Everything in an orbit moves at exactly the same speed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_m...

You can only collide with an orbiting object if one of you is changing orbits.

It's very difficult to force to objects to meet in orbit with nearly the same velocity; it requires complex active maneuvering.

There are small debris clouds, but also large uncontrolled spacecraft, like boosters. De-orbiting those could be a huge help, since a collision with a stray booster would create gobs of debris so those orbits may be completely avoided.

Things that are not rigid and that distribute the force throughout the body (think of slapping a big slab of silicone).

Whipple shields

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield