Isn't there a massive risk of space debris and meteors hitting the shuttle whilst in orbit around earth?

Mercury/Gemini: None of the rocket bodies or boosters from those programs ever reached orbit, so they all ended up in the ocean. There are various bits of debris that are still in earth orbit from those days, such as glove lost during Gemini 4, and a camera lost during Gemini 10. Apollo: The lower stages from the Saturn-V fell into the ocean.

The upper S-IVB booster stage met different fates depending on the mission. On earlier missions, the booster was injected into solar orbit (there are 3 of them in that category today, from Apollos 8, 10, and 11). On later missions, the booster was crashed into the moon.

But a strange thing happened on Apollo 12. The Apollo 12 S-IVB booster was long thought to have been injected into solar orbit; but in 2002, an "asteroid" was discovered that seemed to be orbiting the earth; it was discovered that this was the Apollo 12 S-IVB, and it is believed to be in an unstable orbit that sometimes carries it around the earth and sometimes around the sun in a 40-year cycle. So it's debatable whether this is in "earth orbit", but it's definitely still out there.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.