#4 - World Building, Space Debris:

Taylor With A Bullet

Larger debris collection had been started before the Great Cleansing by the first private commercial salvaging ventures into space. The TLRs (Tri Laser Rings) were a fail-safe passage; any craft choosing a more direct route between the Low Earth Orbit and Supra Earth Orbit docks did so at their own risk, outbound only, and only with military approval.

A fleet of sweeper bots had been patrolling LEO space for decades before the completion of Dock Cylinder Alpha; in the present day, they continued with the task of capturing or herding particulates toward the TLRs for vaporization.

Since it was an international crime for anything to fall from a craft once it moved into Low Earth Orbit, compressed gas and ion sprays blasted the crafts’ hulls as they came through the TLR’s. This provoked occasional fireworks outside the ring boundaries. Anything that wasn’t removed here was the captain’s responsibility, and a weigh station sat at the inside lips of these passages for any extra-vehicular activity to further batten or preen.