I wonder if we could use drones to clean all that up. Maybe all that debris could be pushed together and bound somehow and then propelled incrementally into the sun. Kind of like Futurama, but without the return of the giant trash ball.
I doubt it. The problem with the Kessler cloud is that these objects are moving in various directions at speeds several times faster than a bullet. It's one thing to get a craft to line up with one specific piece of debri, but when it's a random vortex of fast-moving shrapnel, anything you put up there will be destroyed, and it's fragments will contribute to the cloud.
What if we just stuck a huge piece of metal and carbon fiber up there and just sort of let it hit?Or how about raw explosions, no shrapnel, just boom? When I'm talking sheet of metal and carbon fiber and other similarly durable materials, I'm talking possibly several layers of it, and very thick. It gets hit, gets filled with debris, and then gets dissembled. Or not, it could just become a giant floating net to catch various small objects. Also, scientists. C'mon. Shields. Let's get on this guys. You have a reason, we have a need. Star Trek me up baby.
I would think that massive slabs of sticky foam could do a good job of absorbing high speed debris without also releasing particulate.