Orbital Collisions, Have they happened to anyone?

[Sean2323]

I was just wondering if, whether by accident, or on purpose, as someone lifted their rocket up into orbit, a piece of deadly stuff you left up there and should be ashamed of debris that you really can\'t blame on anyone had actually hit you?

The closest I got was when a piece of debris from an old impacter test came around 4 km from a munar rocket that I had just barely slugged up into Kerbin Orbit, I didn\'t notice the piece until it was 30-40 km away in map view, but by looking at the two orbits, the closest point seemed to be about 4 km.

I\'ll keep trying to get stuff to collide in my game, while I wait for a hopefully epic screenshot of someone\'s rocket and dreams of an epic munar landing or whatever that rocket was destined to do, being totally demolished so fast you don\'t even know what the heck happened, and of course, Jeb smiling all the way through it . Unless you put jeb on a less suicidal amazingly fun and important rocket... in which case... shame on you. =P

[SteevyT]

Video I found on YouTube (ok, so it was posted on the forums and that\'s how I found it)

KSP Orbital Collision

Closest I\'ve come is within 1km in opposite orbits. Here is what that looked like. (Suicide goes west, junk goes east)

[togfox]

I\'ve tried to orchestrate this with auto-pilots to make it as exact as possible but no luck so far. My biggest fear is that some items have collided but I\'ve been focused on other craft and totally missed it!

[what-the]

The only collision I\'ve had was when I ejected a stage turned around and fired my engines crashing straight into the ejected stage. Broke off part of my Sat. I was not thinking clearly at the time.

[Jarnis]

Space is so vast that it is highly unlikely unless you specifically try to rig one up on purpose and even then it is hard.

However, with persistence if you stack up enough spent stages on similar orbits, it is an accident waiting to happen... which is why proper space missions design things so that spent boosters either re-enter the atmosphere or end up at very wide orbits that further reduce the odds.

In fact, it is an interesting challenge to try to stick to that when designing Mun rockets - goal being that you discard a stage when your orbit periapsis is still in the atmosphere (even if there is some fuel left - but as little as possible), then crawl up the remaining meters per second with the TLI stage. For added challenge, set things up so that your TLI stage will also collide with Mun *or* get ejected to deep space (with the lander engine taking care of the rest, all the way to the surface).

[Steve5451]

I\'ll worry about it when the mission itself is escaping Kerbin without hitting any debris. =P

[Jarnis]

Yeah, that\'s exactly the potential problem if you don\'t consider where you dump stages... ;D

[Steve5451]

The ones that are orbiting along the horizon are from Mün missions. The vertical orbits are from just being bored and orbiting or a couple deployed satellites.

However, I only have three on the Mün right now because they glitch into the ground and I can\'t do anything about it. That and the ones that I do attempt to bring back have either (in most cases) made it back or in orbit of Kerbin. :C

Also, that debris that is far off is orbiting Kerbin was from a mission to the Mün and actually orbits Kerbin in an elliptical orbit, gets into the Mün\'s SOI and gets launched back to Kearth. I can tell because I\'ve actually witnessed it three times and every once and a while when I\'m doing a mission I look at my map view and sometimes the orbit is a bit more vertical and a tad bit more elliptical every time it exits the Mün\'s SOI.

[Baleur]

Fun stuff

Can\'t wait to simulate this in KSP lol.

Docking with space stations? Pah!! Docking with junk is the real challenge =D

[Sean2323]

I laughed at the video, Bob and Bill are scared, and jeb\'s happy, then WHACK their ship is split in half and all three start smiling and laughing

Plus that was an Amazing video, I hope Harvester adds competing space companies so a piece of my 'debris' from a 'purpose built space rocket' can 'accidentally' collide with their space station. ;D

[E. F. Kranz]

In fact, it is an interesting challenge to try to stick to that when designing Mun rockets - goal being that you discard a stage when your orbit periapsis is still in the atmosphere (even if there is some fuel left - but as little as possible), then crawl up the remaining meters per second with the TLI stage. For added challenge, set things up so that your TLI stage will also collide with Mun *or* get ejected to deep space (with the lander engine taking care of the rest, all the way to the surface).

I\'ve begun designing everything that way.

I wish there was a module that would let me control spent stages.

[SteevyT]

I wish there was a module that would let me control spent stages.

Ta Dah!

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=8021.0