There must be heaps of debris orbiting earth. Why did the Apollo missions not get damaged? Or the Mars missions? No I am not a "Hollywood Basement" person. I genuinely want to know.
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answers:
Enough Trolls say: Space is big, they DO hear the occaisional "ping" as a microfragment slaps the hull.
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Periferalist say: It does, the Apollo missions didn't last long enough for them to be damaged too badly, and there have been many Mars missions that ended catastrophically.
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say: Luck and gravity. It could happen though
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Will say: It has happened with microscopic pieces of debris thousands of times. The astronauts cannot make as many space walks as they used to, because to move around, they run their hand over a series of hand rails. Over time, these handrails have suffered numerous impacts, and the edge of the impact sites are razor sharp. Some of the astronauts have come back from spacewalks with cuts on their gloves, but (fortunately) not deep enough to cause a decompression.
There is a good article on the problem at the link below, until the author gets to the conclusion that the problem has been "solved". The "solution" is just a stop-gap covering, and the problem is getting worse, not better.
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Dixon say: They try to track the most dangerous bits of debris.
http://www.space.com/16518-space-junk.ht...
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Robert say: Becauze the space station is at Area 51.
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Satan Claws say: You can figure it out for yourself with some numbers.
Suppose you spread a mass of, say, 500 thousand tons (a few times the mass of a filled-up Saturn 5 rocket) over a volume of 500 kilometers high by 40 thousand kilometers long by 20 thousand kilometers wide. See how much grams will be contained per unit volume (say one cubic meter) and compare that mass with the mass of one screw. That will give you the probability of finding one such piece of metal over a very long time.