No space travel after 1995

POD: An accident causes Space Shuttle Atlantis and Russian space station Mir to smash into each other in the most damaging way possible during a 1995 mission. The resulting field of debris triggers a chain reaction in Low Earth Orbit, virtually all satellites in this area are eventually destroyed and new ones can't be sent up because LEO is rendered impassable for several generations.

What would the world look like now, in 2013?
 

NothingNow

Banned
So, you want to trigger Kessler Syndrome eh?
The resulting field of debris triggers a chain reaction in Low Earth Orbit, virtually all satellites in this area are eventually destroyed and new ones can't be sent up because LEO is rendered impassable for several generations.
We'd have built a few ground based chemical lasers to sweep up LEO pretty quickly. $500 million USD to fund the Orion Laser NASA was discussing back then is pretty cheap compared to being unable to launch weather and spy satellites.

What would the world look like now, in 2013?
We'd be finishing clean-up right about now, and would be quite busily replacing all those lost satellites, and establishing a new scheme of environmental impact statements and de-orbiting plans to prevent it from happening again.
Also, you'd see a lot of inflatable systems, or at least inflatable balloons protecting satellites.
 
1) youd have to get them to blow up to get that much debris.
2) it really only affects space stuff about in that orbit.
2.1) so the highly lucrative GEO satellites are only briefly exposed to danger. Insurance for those goes up a bit, but otherwise that segment of the industry is un affected.
2.2) manned/crewed space travel might well be toast.
3) mitigation efforts from the aforementioned laser to various orbital mechanisms would quickly happen.
4) thered probably be a new space treaty allocating responsibilty for future debris production. Possibly grandfathering in existing satellites.
 
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