A spherical Whipple shield might be able to capture debris. A 1 mm thick aluminum shell with a radius of 100 m would mass 810,000 kg. If SpaceX's Starship can achieve launch costs of 10/kg, that's $8 M per sphere.
But passive objects are only as likely to provide value as the ratio of the number of the total volume of the sacrificial objects to the total volume of assets, so you'd want a bunch of them.
Since the debris of interest is really just the material traveling in orbit, a cylinder might be more efficient, if some primitive attitude control could be included efficiently.
But passive objects are only as likely to provide value as the ratio of the number of the total volume of the sacrificial objects to the total volume of assets, so you'd want a bunch of them.
Since the debris of interest is really just the material traveling in orbit, a cylinder might be more efficient, if some primitive attitude control could be included efficiently.