Originally Posted by vermin

...snip

"And use of ground-based lasers to disturb the orbits of satellites isn't practical because of the mass of the satellites and the amount of energy that would be needed." - no longer true.

The parent company (in Australia) of the company I work for has successfully moved space debris around with a ground based laser. Using an ablative laser they can move space objects along six axes and/or rotate it at will, much like a tractor beam (according to our CEO and chief genius, Dr. Ben Green). This project is being pursued with assistance from the U.S. Air Force, and it is not classified. Once again the media seems to like to produce fear instead of doing research.