On 10 May 2018 at 20:32, Catherine Berry wrote:

>     the waste disposal system broke down because people kept putting
>     metal items in the non-metal bins etc.

There's a nice rant about that in Bujpold's Ethan of Athos". Improper
recycliong on a space station can cause major problems.

 > Hitting a small piece of debris at orbital speeds, never mind
> constant-multi-g-thrust transit speeds, can cause spectacular damage.
> This has already taken out a number of satellites in real life, and
> it's a constant worry for ISS. Any remotely civilized system will have
> absolutely draconian anti-space-littering regulations. I can easily
> picture being convicted of a capital crime for negligently letting an
> untethered wrench drift away from your ship. I just realized that in
> the wake of a failed pirate attack where the pirates get captured, it
> might be a tossup whether the more serious charge against them would
> be attempted piracy, or creating a navigational hazard for knocking
> pieces off the target ship. :)

James White had that in his book "Deadly Litter". Alas, he didn't
understand the idea of "escape velocity" so he had high speed litter
in *orbits* where it kept returning.

But yeah, STC (Space Traffic Control) is gonna be keeping an eye on
that sort of thing. It's another reason why you are never allowed a
vector that will intersect anything important (bot if you maintain
acceleration or if you cut acceleration)