INTRODUCTION

Spaceflight – wasn't that meant to be the conquering of the universe by mankind? We speak of astronauts, which means “star travellers”, or even of cosmonauts, “seaman in the cosmos”, and also the term “space” itself makes no distinction to “cosmos” or “universe”. These words, coined at the time of the upcoming “space age” are evidence of a fundamental misconception, slipped into the minds of the enthusiastic elder generation and still alife in science fiction literature. The cosmos, the universe, is something nearly infinitively large, should one ever be concerned about overcrowding it with man-made objects?

However, space flight as being exercised today and also in all foreseeable future, has nothing to do with the “universe”. It mainly utilizes a shell around the earth with a thickness of about one third of the earth's radius, it utilizes extensively the geostationary ring about 6 earth radii away from the earth's surface and it performs a few missions in the Solar System. So the space mainly used by man is by no means infinitively large, in fact compared to the universe it is ridiculously small, though its use with its manifold technical and social progress and its perspectives justifies the term “space age”.

While the elder generation was unaware of the problem, it now becomes evident that this comparatively small volume used for spaceflight can easily become overcrowded by space activities.