Space Debris problem

[KerbalKid]

So... i've been launching satellites 24/7 and uhh... just take a look

 

Yeah... so is there any way other than just going to each piece of debris one by one is there a way to delete all this debris?

 

 

 

 

 

[Dfthu]

In the left bar when you click on the debris there's a red button on the bottom that says terminate. Click that at its gone. I personaly think it looks cool to have debris flying around, makes you fell like to you have done stuff.

[OutlawFarmer]

He's asking if there's a way to delete all of them together

[KerbalKid]

Well i just terminated all of the debris which pretty much took me 10 freaking minutes.

[HvP]

In the startup settings menu there is a slider to set the number of persistent debris in the game. You can reduce this to zero to clean out all of the debris. But be careful, double check that there's nothing you want to keep that is tagged as debris such as uncontrolled base modules that haven't been hooked up yet or something.

[Xyphos]

you wouldn't end up with so much debris from launching satelites, if you launched them from the cargobay of a reusable spaceplane.
best part, it doesn't have to be SSTO, it can be Rocket-Assisted Take-Off (RATO) where you strap solid boosters to the plane, gun it down the runway and by the time you're ready to stage them off, the RAPIER engines have already Mached-over

 

[AeroAviation]

Feel like your gonna have a "Gravity" on your hands if you ever try make a space station

[KerbalKid]

I Did have a space station in orbit

[Snark]

Or you can just click the little icon at the top of the map screen so that it doesn't show debris, and then your problem is solved. Debris is only a problem if you care about it. 

If you do care about debris, it's not too hard to design your space launches to be "tidy", at least for the Kerbin system.  Only stage away stuff when you're either suborbital (so they'll fall back to Kerbin and burn up), or (if you're going to the Mun or Minmus) when you're on a collision course with them, so they'll get taken care of that way.  The thing to avoid is staging away stuff when you're in orbit, since then it just hangs around.

It's a little harder when you go interplanetary, if you really want to be hard-core about debris, because if you've got more than one stage there, it'll go to solar orbit-- there aren't any handy obstacles to get in the way and take care of your debris for you.  On the other hand, the solar system is a big place, and frankly I don't mind littering in it a little. 

[samstarman5]

It is also a good time to figure up just the right amount of fuel to give your satellite itself to establish full orbit, and make sure the last stage you deploy it from remains sub-orbital.

When I have the funds or am just playing sandbox, I will go ahead and just attach a drone to the last stage for a controlled re-entry.  You need to make sure there are some batteries and one or two solar panels included, as any drone other than the yellow HECS carry very little power on their own.

Any debris that dips into the atmosphere but remains in orbit(I've determined so far that anything that doesn't go below ~60k won't get removed if it is on rails), I will go ahead and terminate as it should have burned up anyway. So even if I oopsie and still establish an orbit for a disposable stage, it isn't necessarily going to remain there if it has a Peri under 70k.  Of course, with this rule of mine in career, it can be a pain for kerbal rescues since they now come with a capsule of some sort.  Unless I have THE CLAW unlocked, that capsule is going to remain in orbit and remind me of its presence every time I go to the map.  And for those going to ask, I choose not to redesignate it to debris. I'm stubborn like that.

[Alshain]

19 hours ago, Xyphos said:

you wouldn't end up with so much debris from launching satelites, if you launched them from the cargobay of a reusable spaceplane.
best part, it doesn't have to be SSTO, it can be Rocket-Assisted Take-Off (RATO) where you strap solid boosters to the plane, gun it down the runway and by the time you're ready to stage them off, the RAPIER engines have already Mached-over

 

 

If you are going to do that, forget the spaceplane entirely and just strap some upside down sepatrons onto the final stage.  Have them fire when the decoupler stages while pointing prograde.  It will de-orbit itself.

Edited June 19, 2016 by Alshain

[AlamoVampire]

23 hours ago, KerbalKid said:

So... i've been launching satellites 24/7 and uhh... just take a look

 

Yeah... so is there any way other than just going to each piece of debris one by one is there a way to delete all this debris?

 

 

 

 

 

there is a "cheaty" way to remove all debris at once: turn max persistent debris to 0 in settings, load the save and anything marked as DEBRIS goes POOF. careful tho, make sure only what you want to go poof is marked as debris. once cleared, reset to what ever number is your happy number for debris. Or, if you want, you can just RP that everything shot into space has enough explosives to make it vaporize itself <ala terminate button XD> after each launch hehe

[Tiberius K]

I launch most kerbin system vessels with a single stage to orbit rocket with just enough fuel for a controlled-ish parachute assisted landing near or hopefully right on the KSC.  I haven't really done the math but I'm sure the value of recovering the engine + empty tanks trumps the cost of the extra fuel used to lift a larger single stage.

[Jestersage]

Here's my question:

1. Does debris affect the performance of the game?
2. In terms of realism, Is it better to leave the debris, or should they be desposed / moved to somewhere else?
3. If they should be disposed, would you prefer the realistic way (de-orbit or heliocentric orbits), or the Big red X?

[Corona688]

1. Not much.  Unless you're close enough to interact with the debris, physics doesn't kick in and debris is only tracked.
2. Realistically, space debris is a real thing.  Whether you want it is totally up to you.
3. I usually de-orbit stuff if I can.  If I can't, oh well.

[Mister Kerman]

I wondered what exactly the red button did. I don't leave space trash. I generally ditch my ascent stage while suborbital, and my transfer stage into the body I transfer to.

 

If it simply deletes the trash then I'll probably start doing that. It seems like KSP doesn't let you deorbit something that isn't directly observed. I should be able to leave something dipping into the atmosphere a tiny bit and eventually have it deorbit it's self, but unless this has changed from previous versions this doesn't happen.

 

I was always scared to push it on account of it possibly just stop tracking the debris and the debris would be still up there orbiting Kerbin.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Mister Kerman

[magnemoe]

On 19.6.2016 at 7:13 AM, samstarman5 said:

It is also a good time to figure up just the right amount of fuel to give your satellite itself to establish full orbit, and make sure the last stage you deploy it from remains sub-orbital.

When I have the funds or am just playing sandbox, I will go ahead and just attach a drone to the last stage for a controlled re-entry.  You need to make sure there are some batteries and one or two solar panels included, as any drone other than the yellow HECS carry very little power on their own.

Any debris that dips into the atmosphere but remains in orbit(I've determined so far that anything that doesn't go below ~60k won't get removed if it is on rails), I will go ahead and terminate as it should have burned up anyway. So even if I oopsie and still establish an orbit for a disposable stage, it isn't necessarily going to remain there if it has a Peri under 70k.  Of course, with this rule of mine in career, it can be a pain for kerbal rescues since they now come with a capsule of some sort.  Unless I have THE CLAW unlocked, that capsule is going to remain in orbit and remind me of its presence every time I go to the map.  And for those going to ask, I choose not to redesignate it to debris. I'm stubborn like that.

Satellites are light so you could just use the fuel on the satellite to go from suborbital to its finishing orbit, probe core and various science stuff, batteries and power then an 90 liter fuel tank and an 48-7s should give you 2000 m/s I think, so if the first stage takes to you 1.8 km/s you could send this to Duna.
My first Mun and Minmus missions tend to leave a lot of junk as I want to drop tanks underway. 

[Guest]

Why not go around and fetch all the debris using a ship covered in claws? Then you'll have an awesome junk freighter!

Edited July 12, 2016 by Guest

[Mister Kerman]

1 hour ago, String Witch said:

Why not go around and fetch all the debris using a ship covered in claws? Then you'll have an awesome junk freighter!

Lol that's so dumb, but I like it anyways.

[SnakyLeVrai]

lol yeah that looks bad

I try to run a clean space program with 100% reusable launchers, it saves a lot of funds (boosters, main stage, 2nd stage and / or propulsion stages that tug stuff around Mun and Minmus are all reusable). I can reduce the launch costs by 65% to 70% sometimes!

[Corona688]

8 hours ago, Mister Kerman said:

If it simply deletes the trash then I'll probably start doing that. It seems like KSP doesn't let you deorbit something that isn't directly observed.

It'll let you delete pilots awaiting rescue before you've found them, I think -- before you've entered their SOI and made them viewable.  I haven't pushed it but the button  appears to be 'live'.

So, it's kind of 'magic', yes.

[Znath]

I TRY to reduce as much debris as I can by trying to make larger used sections fall to a planetoid or something.  Once in a while there's no good way to push em out of orbit and a few things get stuck out there.  All my satellites carry fuel to deorbit, you could potentially have extra drone stages on debris for the sole purpose to send em crashing.  It'd raise your cost a lot though as far as weight goes.

[BT Industries]

Personally I like to arm my ship using the BDA mod a do clean up mission,

For those that are still in the dark this involves going around blowing up unwanted junk.

[samstarman5]

15 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Satellites are light so you could just use the fuel on the satellite to go from suborbital to its finishing orbit, probe core and various science stuff, batteries and power then an 90 liter fuel tank and an 48-7s should give you 2000 m/s I think, so if the first stage takes to you 1.8 km/s you could send this to Duna.
My first Mun and Minmus missions tend to leave a lot of junk as I want to drop tanks underway. 

NASA fixed it so most stages between Earth and the Moon would either impact into the Moon or would get kicked into solar orbit.  Something to think about.

[Corona688]

That was possibly the most economical choice.  Sending them back to Earth would have been going the wrong direction.