Trying to inject some off the wall humor into this topic, but no one is having it tonight, darn. Title is "... 300,000 piece of garbage orbiting earth, and it's a big problem". There are extremely few practical solutions other than the passage of hundreds of years of time, if not more, for this garbage to drift into Earth and disintegrate. At least we can joke about it...
Heh, sorry, didn’t mean to be cantankerous.
Actually, a lot of stuff in low orbit, where the space junk problem is worst, will fall to Earth in much less than hundreds of years, due to friction with gas molecules causing the orbits to decay. (Think Skylab, Mir, etc.) Most spacefaring nations are working on ways to reduce addition of more junk, so perhaps the problem can be at least mitigated somewhat, with time.
The above brings up an idea: Launching Al Gore into orbit and letting him yammer would create the emission of huge qty’s. of gas molecules into low Earth orbit. Launch him and Chris Christy, and you’d also block enough sunlight to cool the Earth - not that it actually needs it.
Actually, sarcasm aside, there are thoughts of using lasers or intense light beams to affect “junk” objects’ orbits. Also, down the line, small asteroids could be deflected into orbits around Earth, which asteriods’ gravity could move the junk into concentrated regions, or direct it into Earth’s upper atmosphere, while sweeping other regions relatively clear. (Maybe Earth would end up with rings like Saturn, but made of space junk?!)
P.S. God knows, what with everything going on, and with Obama still at the wheel, we need some humor tonight!