A New Post and A New Day

I've been brainstorming pretty much constantly about a new short story lately, and I still have no idea what I want to write about. Thanks to a friend of mine I now have OpenOffice so I won't have to type the whole thing on wordpad. I don't think he reads this blog, but in case he does, Andy, if the story ever gets written, it'll be because you found me some software. Alright, now on to the point. I have, like I've said, no concrete plan for this story, but I was thinking something about a town full of people in the middle of the desert who's job it is to remove obsolete satellites from orbit. I've been listening to a lot of Nick Cave and a lot of Tom Waits (I recommend them both highly), so it has to be set in the desert so I can have the whole wild west feel. I'm thinking maybe they'll be removing these satellites for one of three reasons:

1. Humans have filled the thermosphere with too much shit, which is now obsolete, but still in the way and we can't get any ships through to deeper parts of space which is severly hampering our colonization attempts

2. Humans were forced to flee Earth due to something (work in progress obviously) and eventually decided it was ok to head back. Only problem is that they need a small ship to be able to zip through the layers of debris in the thermosphere, and that the only ship capable of doing that can only hold about 10 people or so comfortably and the story takes place several generations later where the great great great grandkids of the original earth re-colonizers have carved out a life for themselves and are bringing down satellites so that the larger ships can return for all the people who were left behind out in space to come back.

3. There is a war being fought with spaceships in the lower atmosphere, and the protagonists would be tasked with removing the debris from the on-going war because the chunks of metal from the battles are raining down on the inhabitants of Earth.

I'm kinda leaning towards #3, I feel like that would give me a chance to do more action and focus on the character's work instead of their lives on Earth which are bound to be boring as sin. I'm sure I can work in some bar fights and a comic relief character so the whole thing won't have to take place in low orbit, but still I think the space battles part is the really interesting part. Another issue, I'm pretty sure this is going to be written in 1st person, if it indeed does get written at all, and saying I'm unfamiliar with 1st person writing is a rather big understatement. I don't think I've ever written anything seriously in 1st person, really, nothing. I used to always write in 3rd person limited but I have real trouble writing dialogue in that format because I don't like typing things like "(name) said" and without that it gets confusing. I know 1st person won't really do anything to relieve this, but I'm hoping to establish a very vivid personality for the main protagonist and his or her buddies so that leaving out the "(name) said" kind of stuff won't bungle it entirely. Like I've said, none of this is concrete, at this point, the story could just as easily end up being about an Ostrich who dreams of becoming a nightclub bouncer or something crazy like that.