"U.S. Satellites Outnumber Rest of World"

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States has 413 satellites in space snooping for the government, checking on the weather and relaying the latest pop music, a new database says. That's more than the 382 the rest of the world has spinning above the Earth.

The inventory, developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists and released Wednesday, provides details on some of the Pentagon's most secret satellites, which may gather images in the dark or take high-resolution pictures from 12,000 miles away.

"Until now, the general public didn't have easy access to information about all active satellites," said Dr. Laura Grego, a Cambridge astrophysicist who was on a team that spent several years compiling information on the nearly 800 active satellites. "No one owns space, so everyone has a right to know what's up there."

The material was gleaned from corporations, academics, governments and satellite watchers who as a hobby spend their nights watching the skies for flickers of light.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20051208/D8EBPGQ81.html

so I am not exactly too worried how many satellites are whizzing about.

flying around up there.

Is starting to become a serious problem in Earth's orbit. Satellites break up and their pieces continue to orbit. Debris is ejected from the International Space Station and the various shuttle missions. While some of this garbage eventually makes its way to Earth's atmosphere and burns up, much of it simply continues to orbit the Earth, endangering each and every launch we make. NASA is extremely worried about near Earth space debris, and predicts that if we don't find some way to clean it up in the next quarter century, we won't be able to get into Earth orbit anymore without suffering from a deadly collission with a piece of space debris.

Or possibly magnets. If you miss your shot, all you've done is put another potentially deadly piece of space junk into orbit. Ooops.

The U.S.A.F. has a warfighters guide to space. They are already banking that space will be a future battlefield.