Clean Up Your Room!

Maybe this Solar temper-tantrum is just Papa Sun pitching a fit about us not picking up our toys.

Thousands of nuts, bolts, gloves and other debris from space missions form an orbiting garbage dump around Earth, presenting a hazard to spacecraft. Some of the bits and pieces scream along at 17,500 mph.

Holy Frick! Almost 9000 objects (officially tracked) and over 100,000 pieces of crap bigger than 1 centimeter.

As an example of the hazard, a tiny speck of paint from a satellite once dug a pit in a space shuttle window nearly a quarter-inch wide.

The United States leads the former Soviet Union in the total quantity of orbital junk, but some companies and other organizations contribute significantly to the count.

But let's not just blame the Americans...

More than 200 objects, most of them rubbish bags, were released by the Mir space station during its first 10 years of operation.

Is there anything we don't just make a god-awful mess of? Criminy.