Why would credit rating companies look kindly on a country that accepts debt payments it isn ' t liable for ? ! Well , quite . The unionist argument begins with the false premise that we would be defaulting . <| sep |> You don ' t see debris whizzing by because Debris tends to be very small as in smaller than a few cm , or it would be tracked and the ISS would be steered away from it . Small debris like that would be invisible on the camera . Debris tends to slow down and spiral in towards the planet . It depends a bit on the mass of the debris and the altitude , but in general nothing stays at the ISS ' s altitude for more than a few months or at most years . Even the massive ISS itself slows down and needs a boost now and then to keep it in orbit . Debris doesn ' t leave a trail that high up , so if you can ' t see the tiny debris itself , it ' s invisible . Speed differences in space tend to be huge unless the debris originated from the ISS itself , so debris might not be in front of the camera for more than a single frame , if that . Even though there are somewhere between hundreds of thousands and millions of pieces of debris in orbit around the earth , space is big . Really big . That ' s many , many cubic kilometers per piece . Just like asteroid fields aren ' t like in the movies , the debris is so spread out that unless the debriscausing event is very recent or was in a very similar orbit you ' re not even likely to be close to any one piece of it , never mind close enough to see it .