Space is starting to look like the better mining operation | Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.::Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.
And all the mining waste are dumped in space, where people thought out of human’s reach so it’s safe to leave it there, until proven otherwise. I may be pessimistic, but if such technological advance made it will likely expand region of human activity and thus history repeats.
Space is big, really big. On average there are thousands of kilometers between asteroids. Between the larger ones I’m seeing estimates if 100,000 kilometers between them. Earth is 12756 kilometers in diameter.
If humanity gets to a point where it can support a population as large as you are suggesting, then we can probably deal with space junk in the asteroid belt. Also we can just go “over” it.