If only ... back in 1988 ....

Actually, the KESTS to GEO transportation structure would not only require removal of the orbiting debris field junk, but also would require the removal of both working and non-working satellites below GEO except those carefully shifted in orbit to avoid collision with the transportation structure, since they all cross the equatorial plane. Nearly all satellite-type functions could be done in GEO if not even better there, including GPS function now using stationary points instead of moving ones. And if the KESTS to GEO project had gotten started back in 1988 when I first proposed it publicly (on GEnie network; was before public internet usage) I estimated the first one could be test-built in 12 years - that would have been back in 2000, 9 years ago - and the cheap easy putting into orbit electrically from then on would have prevented the need for most of the satellites and space station etc built in orbit below GEO since then. But no, the powerful space-business-related folks back then chose to see the KESTS to GEO as a rival-to-be-beaten instead of great opportunity for all. And so we are now stuck without the abundant big solar power satellites that would have been built in GEO by now, preventing the greenhouse-effect atmospheric carbon build up, and similarly stuck without total recycling facilities in GEO with cheap to-from transportation between ground and GEO, and without electrical lift of rockets to GEO from where really interesting expeditions could go forth in style, starting and ending already 91% up out of the planetary gravitational energy well.

It is analogous to if the railroads were not built across the US back in the days of the coal-fired steam locomotive; the wagon, stagecoach, and buckboard makers prevailing against the would-have-been railroad construction; and if the Amerind Nations had to be compensated (analogous to nations with satellites now below GEO) it would have been more obstacles to the cross-continent rail system, so necessary for economical movement of the large quantity big stuff - just like the KESTS to GEO is. Then the interior of the US would have not been accessible adequately for its development and the US would largely have been focused on the east and west coast; without massive development of the interior of the country, no impetus for the interstate highway system to be built when cars and trucks came along; if the US had survived WWI in that condition, it would not have had the strength to survive WWII and at present time, Japan would own the West coast and Germany would own the East coast, two countries not one US anymore. But then, the population of the US would have been so low, that you and I would not have been born and so how could we care? Ah, but life is good.

BTW, despite the relentless pilfering of my records by the snoops, I have found a copy of my magazine article that got published back in 1990 on my KESTS to GEO transportation system concept, and can be seen at http://www.escalatorhi.com/techscifi/treehousehaven.html