How 'environmentally conscious' are you?

[mangekyou-sama]

The thing about space travel is there's always the danger of radiation, forward contamination, Kessler syndrome, etc. Space travel in KSP is no exception. I've seen people taking care not to fire NERVAs in atmosphere. I've seen people in streams altering their ascent paths so as not to fly over any major city (forgot who that is). I also see people making orbiters designed to clean up space debris.

And then there's me, shamelessly test-firing quad-NERVA units on the launchpad, not caring where my discarded boosters landed, dumping stages with excess fuel on Kerbin's serene oceans, contaminating Duna(badly) by deorbiting the spent quad-nerva unit used for interplanetary transfer...

Well I guess the question is, how do you (not) take care of the environment/atmosphere/system/galaxy in your save?

[Fluburtur]

I don't think firing NERVAs in atmosphere would be a bad thing, the radioactive material is not in direct contact with the gases so there should be no contamination but I still don't see why you would fire them in atmo exept on a spaceplane.
And deorbiting stuff is good to keep lag low as well as space polution so I guess it's win/win.

[Korizan]

De-orbiting is a bit of a catch 22. You are cleaning up space by using Kerbans atmo as a furnace by dumping all the byproducts directly into the atmosphere.
I am not sure how you would classify that but this is my preferred method of keeping the space junk down.
That and Mun and Minmus have a few (A LOT) more craters :D

[Hannu]

I do not use Nervas in atmosphere and do not allow to re-entry them with spent stages (if it is not absolutely necessary to save kerbals (typically I have forgot something at building phase)). Even if they are safe if they work normally, there can be accidents. There are also idealistic environmental activists with very poor scientific education and greedy politicians who see them much larger mass of voters than nerdy space enthusiasts in my kerbal world. And more important, I do not see any technical reasons to use LV-Ns in atmosphere.

I left everything into space and avoid only KSC when I drop stages. Even if there were cities in Kerbin it would be possible to launch to any inclination so than stages drop to ocean.

[Randazzo]

I've dumped countless NERVA engines into the ocean, along with a couple of regular reactors or two.

Couple that with all the mystery goo that has escaped into the water, and there is bound to be a "Blob" incident eventually.

[cantab]

I don't give a flying fig.

[Wolfos31]

When possible I try to avoid leaving stages in orbit because I lost a ship to a in orbit collision back in .23. I also don't leave anything I care about in an orbit lower than 100km because I always circularize my orbit low down before pushing it up higher and LKO is cluttered with junk at this point. Other than that I don't have many environmentally minded considerations except on the subject of NERVA engines. I have set a goal for my career of never destroying a nuke engine. If they are to be decommissioned they must be soft landed in KSC bay for recovery and all launches containing a NERVA have at least one failsafe to attempt to soft land them if things go pear shaped.

[Kevin Kyle]

This build and current campaign, I havent left a single piece of space debris anywhere. Gone out of my way to keep it that way. So that means, just like many others, I have slam dunked every moon and planet within my reach. Havent gotten any calls from any agencies claiming bad things about my methods and no Kerbals have died in space or on planet so I guess its all good.

[HoloYolo]

I really don't care. My closest pass with debris was 2km, but it was only a decoupler, so it's not like it would've done much. NERVAs, I could care less. Stages provide the biggest risk but 30km is not close enough to make me worry.

[Enorats]

I generally use the magic "abort" button back at KSC to erase any debris from existence. As for the rest.. kerbin is utterly empty and uninhabited.. so why worry?

[Alshain]

I design craft to [URL="https://youtu.be/n6EQjFeo3nw?t=17m38s"]self de-orbit the upper stage[/URL], but I still end up with debris in space and I do not remove it. I currently have missions to Moho and Jool underway, and MANY missions around Kerbin done, including several scan sats, com sats, contract sats, 2 stations at Kerbin and one at Minmus, with 40 total debris.


EDIT: I take that back, I have deleted debris if it's Pe is in the atmosphere but not low enough to get removed. I don't have time to sit around watching debris burn all day so I feel justified that it doesn't count really. Edited November 20, 2015 by Alshain

[Temstar]

[img]http://i67.tinypic.com/2a00o44.jpg[/img]
I always design upper stage to deorbit. Chemical engine powered transfer stages gets smashed into the target moon/planet, nuke engines stay on crafts that can be reused in space.

[jf0]

I did not care at all until one of my launches came within 200m of an orbiting booster debris. I've never hit anything, but came close several times. The problem is in career mode I had a very useful medium booster that I launched about 20 times, but its design was such that the 2nd stage would end up in low oribit. So I have heaps of those floating around. Also around mun things like: "Lander v1, Lander v1 rescue, lander v1 rescue recovery, lander v1 recovery rescue". I've also had two large space stations explode into tiny bits when I switch to them in tracking station, so i have a lot of debris.

I dont want to remove it, because I like the added chance of colliding with it. But I dont want to add any more, so nearly all my boosters are now 3 or 2 stages where 1st and 2nd stage never make it to orbit, 3rd stage is either part of the payload or gets crashed into mun/minmus or escapes kerbin.

I've tried a few times to capture and recover the debris, but its usually not worth it and occasionally results in disaster anyway.

[FancyMouse]

My take: no orbital debris. Anything with nuclear fission material (meaning stock NERVA and related parts from other mods) must be either recovered on Kerbin or crash into Sun/Jool. I'm not so sure about RTGs - currently I treat it as regular parts and can crash anywhere.

[n.b.z.]

When designing a spaceplane that needs to carry a good remaining delta-V to LKO, one may follow an approach of carrying a nuke, and using the least viable amount of air-breathing thrust to lift it to orbit.

I have more than once come up with designs that required firing the nuke at around 10K m to get across the transonic drag. In other words, designs where lighting the nuke in the atmosphere made the difference between not being able to break Mach 1 and achieving a high orbit or even going to Minmus.

It would indeed be a horrible environmental disaster to have spent the resources and materials on building these ships, only to park them on the junkyard because some legislation bans the use of equipment at a point where its use is crucial. :cool:

[A35K]

I don't get why so many think that firing an LV-N near kerbals or in atmosphere is bad. It is a thermal rocket, the exhaust is exactly the same as that of a chemical rocket (except it's not combusting), the radioactivity stays inside the reactor used to provide the heat. That said, I dump LV-Ns all over the place, but I just assume that the radioactive stuff is stored in a small indestructible casing inside... so feel free to dump it anywhere:sticktongue:. However, since I started using the Interstellar mod, I am VERY careful with those nuclear reactors, so I only send them on the most reliable lifters, to make sure they won't crash anywhere.

[Guest]

I'm not good with debris. They're everywhere. That gives me an idea. I'm going to do a game with NO debris...

[Bev7787]

Debris is hanging around my station. Do I care? Nah!

EDIT: On Station module buses, the Command module is on the bus behind the decoupler and the buses restart their engines to debris somewhere onto Kerbin. Edited November 22, 2015 by Bev7787

[Gaarst]

I hate spacejunk... but I hate even more deleting it from the tracking station.

So each time I go somewhere, I do my best to leave no debris at all in orbit: send them on crash trajectories, circularise with payload engines...
And I don't use NERV in my main save: too OP, I prefer doing everything with dem good ol' chemical engines!

[Madrias]

I used to play with the strategy of not making an environmental disaster out of Kerbin, but these days... Nuke stages spiraling through the atmosphere after deorbit, dumped stages into the oceans with extra fuel, fairings left in orbit, engines, fuel tanks, and smashed space probes in orbit. Deorbited nuke engines through the atmosphere. RTG's everywhere without a single care.

I've given up trying to be clean and neat, and so I'm trying for the inevitable Kessler Cascade.

[Guest]

[quote name='Madrias']I used to play with the strategy of not making an environmental disaster out of Kerbin, but these days... Nuke stages spiraling through the atmosphere after deorbit, dumped stages into the oceans with extra fuel, fairings left in orbit, engines, fuel tanks, and smashed space probes in orbit. Deorbited nuke engines through the atmosphere. RTG's everywhere without a single care.

I've given up trying to be clean and neat, and so I'm trying for the inevitable Kessler Cascade.[/QUOTE]
Same. Kerbin is a trash heap.

[Choctofliatrio]

Um... I recover crashed planes? But seriously, for the most part, I am pretty messy. Stages left in orbit, accidentally broken landers, shattered Mun rover debris, it's enough to make a Greenpeace member's brain melt.

[Guest]

Environmentally conscious, eh?

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/OmyV3.png[/IMG]

[Choctofliatrio]

[quote name='Aperture Science']Environmentally conscious, eh?

[URL]http://i.imgur.com/OmyV3.png[/URL][/QUOTE]

...
*Hands you crown made of trash and toxic waste* You win Pollution.

Hey, everyone always wanted Kerbin to have rings, right? Right?

[Rainbow-Dashie]

The landscape of Kerbin is littered with rocket debris, crashed aircraft, a satelite that somehow fell out of orbit in one piece (just... how?), a de-orbited space station debris field, and all sorts of bits and bobs floating off the KSC coast....

And then you actually get into orbit, oh jeez....