Probably if we stopped launching new stuff, most of it would be gone in a few years to a few decades. Most of the orbits of this stuff aren't that stable. Most satellites have decaying orbits that need correcting regularly.
I have to object the phrasing debris blanket here though. If you compare low orbit (where most of this stuff is) to the combined surface areas of our oceans, it's larger because it also includes the surface area of our landmass and you have to take into account the larger sphere radius of an extra 100km.
Just driving the point home that it's a pretty big surface area if you assume it's effectively 2D. Which of course it isn't. If you then add the third dimension with say a couple of hundred kilometer that make up low earth orbit, the probability of hitting anything drops pretty low. That stuff should be extremely rare.
There's a bit of debris in orbit. Some of the larger bits, we track. Of course if you do hit something, the speed differences mean a collision can do some real damage.
Compared to naturally occurring stuff (meteorites, space rocks, etc) it's not that much of an additional risk. ISS does get hit by that stuff occasionally. A bigger rock (pebble sized) could do a lot of damage. I don't think that has happened yet. It's a non zero risk but an acceptable one.
I think the main problem is that the stuff is moving so fast wrt eachother that a particle isn't 0-dimensional but effectively becomes 1-dimensional, a long trace.
So you'd have to think of the debris as miles long strands, and suddenly it seems quite likely to hit one.
I have to object the phrasing debris blanket here though. If you compare low orbit (where most of this stuff is) to the combined surface areas of our oceans, it's larger because it also includes the surface area of our landmass and you have to take into account the larger sphere radius of an extra 100km.
Just driving the point home that it's a pretty big surface area if you assume it's effectively 2D. Which of course it isn't. If you then add the third dimension with say a couple of hundred kilometer that make up low earth orbit, the probability of hitting anything drops pretty low. That stuff should be extremely rare.
There's a bit of debris in orbit. Some of the larger bits, we track. Of course if you do hit something, the speed differences mean a collision can do some real damage.
Compared to naturally occurring stuff (meteorites, space rocks, etc) it's not that much of an additional risk. ISS does get hit by that stuff occasionally. A bigger rock (pebble sized) could do a lot of damage. I don't think that has happened yet. It's a non zero risk but an acceptable one.