General Discussion

Low earth orbit (LEO) is actually crowded. One collisional cascade, i.e. Kessler syndrome, from simple error or a belligerent act, and we might be back to pre-sat communications for a long while. There's debate as to whether a Kessler event might cut off access to higher orbits beyond LEO, but it certainly would preclude putting anything else in LEO since inevitable collisions would make the debris problem even worse. It would certainly make traveling into and out of space a whole lot more dangerous.

It's hypothesized that for any space faring species, a Kessler effect might be inevitable. A possible solution to the Fermi Paradox, where instead of blowing themselves up with nukes, they trap themselves on their home planet by putting too much crap in orbit X the probability of collisions no matter how careful you are. Interesting school of thought.