Disclaimers:
This question is part of Foresight’s 2023 Vision Weekends to help spark discussion amongst participants, so the phrasing and resolution criteria may be vaguer than I would normally like for this site. Apologies for that. We thought it would still be useful to make the market public to potentially inform other discussions.
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Related questions
Laser space debris removal will solve that problem
"Serious risk" is doing pretty much all of the work here, I'd bet this way lower if it was clear what was meant by this. I basically believe
Kessler Syndrome is not meaningfully possible at current orbital debris densities, and is the most likely in lower orbits which persist for the shortest time
Space "debris" only really affects Earth orbit, there isn't sufficient density of debris elsewhere to be worth thinking about
Whipple shields work
I think there's basically no way this should resolve "YES". Space debris is bad and a big problem that we should try to fix, but it isn't going to meaningfully limit spaceflight or manned spaceflight. Especially for missions outside of Earth's orbit, debris is just not a limiting factor.