I remember asking once, we don't we just shoot our surplus trash off into the sun and was told that by the cost of launching it outweighs the benefits. Fair!
But what about all of the old satellites and space stations? Why don't we just send a giant magnet around the earth once or twice and then slingshot all that space junk into the sun and thus giving all science fiction writers (when they return from their strike) a plot point they can no longer use in their film scripts?
Seriously though, without the cost of breaching the atmosphere, this seems really cheap to pull, why don't we do this? Why isn't this a standard thing?
The idea of a “giant magnet” wouldn’t work. Magnets have a sharp falloff and making them bigger doesn’t change their maximum range by that much. Even the core of the earth, a massively strong magnet, is barely perceptible to us on the surface. Attempts to deal with space debris rely on sending a spacecraft to dock with it because that is really the only way.
On a separate note, dropping them into the sun is pointless because it would use a large amount of fuel and it’s much easier to have them burn up in the earth’s atmosphere. This generates some greenhouse gasses but there are too few satellites in orbit for this to really matter.
If you want to learn more about orbital mechanics, I would recommend checking out Spaceflight simulator (a free mobile game) or Kerbal Space Program (a desktop game available on Steam for windows, Mac, or Linux, there is also a console version but I have heard bad things about it). Both are fun games where you build rockets and find out about orbital mechanics along the way.
Thank you for taking the time to enlighten me