I just heard an alarming news story about the increasing dangers of space garbage. What? I went straight to that source of all knowledge, the internet, to find out who’s been leaving their trash in space because it wasn’t me.

It turns out that ever since the Space Age began in the 1950s, humans have been launching rockets and satellites into space and leaving them there when they’re finished with them. Uh-oh. I feel a rant coming on.

I shouldn’t be surprised about trash in space. It’s everywhere else. A plastic grocery bag was discovered in the deepest oceanic trench on earth, the Mariana Trench. I didn’t even know you could shop there.

And climbers have left behind literally tons of rubbish on the highest point in the world, Mount Everest. I understand them being tired from the climb, but you’d think it would be easier to carry it down than it was to carry it up.

Some people leave garbage behind wherever they go. Then other people — me, for example — feel compelled to pick it up. If you ever follow me at a discreet distance when I’m out for a walk, you might see me picking up a soda can here and a plastic bottle there. And depending on how good your hearing is and what you consider a discreet distance, you might also hear me muttering unkind words about the litterbugs who left them behind. By the way, they’re called litterbugs because they bug me.

Even if I’m too lazy to pick up trash — and sometimes I am — I always have the energy to grumble about the knucklehead who left it there.

I doubt I’ll be picking up litter on Mount Everest. Probably not in space either. So I’ll just have to mutter about the litterbugs responsible for it. Here goes: What are they thinking? That all their trash will just float off to some other solar system in a distant galaxy. Because that’s what I was thinking.

But no. Junk in space is like those satellites we see in the night sky, stuck in earth’s orbit going around and around. It’s like a ginormous toilet that won’t completely flush. I suppose that’s just as well. If there are creatures living in other galaxies, they might not react well to getting all of our garbage.

With all that trash floating around up there I wondered if I should start wearing a helmet whenever I leave home. I was relieved to learn that I have less than one in a trillion chance of being injured by falling space junk. I figure I have a better chance of being hit by an empty soda can when some litterbug overhears me calling him a knucklehead.. 

Maybe space litterers think, “What’s the big deal? There’s so much …well…space in space.” Apparently it’s not enough for all the spent rockets and dead satellites. There’s plenty of smaller space junk too, for example—fragments from collisions and explosions. Also tools that have been lost during spacewalks. Talk about misplacing your hammer.

And all that debris travels at speeds of about 17,000 miles per hour as it orbits the earth.  A rogue hammer could really do some damage at that speed.

If you’re thinking of boarding a SpaceX flight, you’ll be happy to know that all that junk won’t make it impossible to fly in space. But it will make it more dangerous and expensive. Darn. That leaves me out. But you go ahead. And pick up some trash while you’re there.

Dorothy Rosby is the author of Alexa’s a Spy and Other Things to Be Ticked off About, Humorous Essays on the Hassles of Our Time and other books. Contact her at www.dorothyrosby.com/contact.