Except that stuff in a junkyard stays more or less put. The junk in space moves around. And it moves fast, very fast, 18,000 miles per hour fast. NASA says that at that speed, even a half-inch piece of debris would have the kinetic force of a bowling ball thrown 300 miles per hour. And there is a lot of it - 135,000,000 pieces.
These pieces can hang around for centuries and, at some point, collide with other debris or, maybe, a spacecraft. In 2011, the National Research Council estimated that portions of the space debris environment had already reached this "tipping point," with enough in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris.
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