Well as always mankind has not necessarily been such a good steward of the planet. Only this time he has taken it a bit too far. We are polluting space with junk, small bits and pieces of man-made debris orbiting the planet at extremely high rates of speed. It is a danger to space flight and the new space tourism industry.
We must therefore consider building magnetic space debris and robotic junk collection craft to pick it up and properly dispose of it. Makes sense to use magnets to collect the space junk and debris. We should use that force when possible and so directional magnetism devices and also magnetized components of the Robotic Space Vacuum are desired. In low earth orbit that junk which is not needed could be collected in a separate canister like system and shot towards earth later to burn up in the atmosphere. But not all space junk is created equally and some is not magnetically charged.
The good junk we should recycle. The good debris, which we are referring too could be used for another source later? It could be sent to the ISS via the canister with a special rocket booster on it for safe and accurate arrival and could be captured via the Space Arm at the ISS or it could be shot to the moon later. Although that may take a lot of energy, reducing the value in ROI [return on investment] of what was collected. As what is collected will be a whole lot of worthless crap, and some very valuable stuff too, made of expensive and exotic metals.
If it was deemed profitable to collect and therefore worthy of a larger, expensive canister with booster rockets then you could shoot it to the moon. Have an explosive charge to stop rapid approach speeds and then deploy air-bags just before it hit. Now you have a canister full of assorted space junk on the moon. Environmentalists and Space Lawyers are going to want to kill me for that.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/