Do you have any abandoned vehicles?

[nascarlaser1]

3 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

"StupidStation" - a really dumb (but very well-paid) contract for a station in sun orbit. Something along the lines '19 kerbals, lab, cupola, three times more electricity than you'll ever need'. So I ejected it out of the system, didn't even enter any orbit, just burned straight up until I ran out of fuel.

Duna lander. Left in Duna orbit. The return was traumatic enough - broke undercarriage on landing, so to be able to lift the nose, and start vertically, all RCS was moved to the nose cone and everything I could do without detached. Including solar panels. The desolate wreck was left in orbit, and the crew migrated to the orbital lab. Jeb rides back to Kerbin in a command seat left after an Ike lander.

First unkerbed probes to Mun and Minmus. Later I landed some better science collectors which I use for the contracts.

BigMiner, a huge rig that looks awesome, but is too heavy to be practical. Maybe some day. Currently it's parked in LKO and doesn't go anywhere anytime soon.

At times, I leave boosters that achieved something "special", e.g. one Flea with Stayputnik that crosses Eve orbit...

Other than that, I have infrastructure, which is not abandoned, but "on standby". SavingKlaws (probes that land stranded kerbals, launched to orbit in bulk - two hubs, one with short-range for LKO, and one with long-range, for Mun and Minmus. A dropship carrier. Any kerbal that needs to return home can take a capsule and fly it back down. Sixteen capsules, currently fourteen remaining, but once Duna returns, that will change. Stuff like that.

Cool!

[Guest]

A station around Minmus that was supposed to serve as a Kerbin-SOI fuel depot, but I've found just throwing up the odd pod into LKO as required works best for me right now. So, it's indefinitely derelict, and any future large-scale fuel dump is likely to be in LKO and supplied directly by lifters from the KSC rather than ISRU setups. Still, I should get the station running as a practice for extraplanetary operations that won't have KSC support within a day.

[Captain Vlad]

Currently I have no abandoned craft.  But on my first career, I launched a returnable Mun 'base' (really a very large lander) that I landed at an intersection near multiple biomes.  It's accompanying craft, launched with a second rocket, was an overbuilt six-wheeled rover I made in order to drive around, sampling as much science as I could before taking it back to the lander for collection.  I spent hours driving the thing around, trying not to crash (it did not flip easily, but I tend to be an enthusiastic driver).  And then I sent the big lander back home.

I'd known starting out that I would be leaving it behind since my expertise level at the time didn't fill me with confidence so far as a recovery mission goes.  But I'd gotten so attached to it during all the samplings runs that I couldn't just delete it, and let it sit there throughout the rest of that career.  Actually turned out to be a handy navigational reference point on more than one occasion.

[JakeSparkleChicken]

In my current career, just a few SCANsat probes in polar orbits around Kerbin, Mun and Minmus.  My previous careers are another story.  The last career had a mothership with two landers and two probes attached in orbit around Duna that fell victim to the dreaded docking bug, ten frozen Kerbals waiting for me to get up the guts to edit the save file and manually fix the ports.  The loss of that mission was one of the driving forces behind starting my current career, but I probably put in another fifty or sixty hours cleaning up some other loose ends before pulling the plug.

In a career using KSPI-E and OPM, I grossly overestimated how well my microwave transmission constellation would work over interplanetary distances and thought that the solar panels were magic.  I unlocked the warp drive, sent Val out to Plock as my first test, and had no means of coming home.  She sat out there, all alone, waiting patiently for me to send a rescue mission that never came.  I still have the save file, so she still has a glimmer of hope, but I know in my heart that that particular universe's Val is destined to float in inky darkness forever.

[nascarlaser1]

1 hour ago, JakeSparkleChicken said:

In a career using KSPI-E and OPM, I grossly overestimated how well my microwave transmission constellation would work over interplanetary distances and thought that the solar panels were magic.  I unlocked the warp drive, sent Val out to Plock as my first test, and had no means of coming home.  She sat out there, all alone, waiting patiently for me to send a rescue mission that never came.  I still have the save file, so she still has a glimmer of hope, but I know in my heart that that particular universe's Val is destined to float in inky darkness forever.

What is KSPI-E and OPM?

[Andem]

1 hour ago, nascarlaser1 said:

What is KSPI-E and OPM?

Kerbal Space Program Interstellar - Extended

Outer Planets Mod

[CaelumEtAstra]

I have two flyby probes, Frontier 3 and 4. (The former flew by Dres, the latter Moho) Right now they are sitting out in solar orbit, have completed their mission and no longer needed.

Perhaps they might fly by their previously assigned planets. If and when they do, however, they will no longer be talking to them or even listening.

[Razor235]

I have a bunch of interplanetary ships in Kerbin orbit that I never bothered getting rid of.  There wasn't any real easy way to recover them and their crews safely, and I'm not a big fan of dropping NERVAS back onto Kerbin, so I just parked them in whatever orbit they ended at after aerocapture and let them sit there after retrieving their crew with a shuttle.  They do have autonomous control and some fuel left, so I could theoretically refuel them and use them again which was my original intention, but I never really bothered as hauling enough fuel up there would be roughly the same effort and cost as launching a new one, to which I could also apply any tweaks or upgrades I added.

[Sharpy]

@Razor235 Well, they DO have historical significance. You might want to build an orbital museum!

[cantab]

I suppose it depends what you mean by "abandoned". In my current save I have plenty of orbiting and landed probes that have finished their primary mission but stick around and are operable if I want. But since I'm playing Science not Career there's little reason to touch them. I also have ascent stages from Kerballed landers, which again could technically be used again for something but probably never will.

But my biggest abandoned thing is Harvester Station. A science station in Mun orbit, the last Kerbals departed it when I felt I'd had enough science out of it. It stayed in Mun orbit until a bug with my modded solar system kicked it out, then I used the station's engines and gravity assists to relocate it to Serran orbit and refuelled it there, but I've yet to reoccupy it with Kerbals.

 

As far as previous saves go, well there's the Kerbal who "retired" on Eve in a large rover. The boat bobbing just off a Laythian island after its crew of four got in their rockets to ascend to orbit and went home on the mothership. And the electric plane that was left landed out after each contract it did, ready to do the next one, but the next one never came.

Edited August 25, 2016 by cantab

[Aegolius13]

I keep making lunar shuttles to fulfill contracts (often contracts for "space stations."  As long as it has a docking port and antenna, I guess it's a "station").  I have like 5-6 Hitchiker based shuttles, a couple 20ish person Mk 3 shuttles, some Mk 2 nuclear powered shuttles.. it goes on and on.  So I have way more shuttles than any amount of shuttlin' work I expect to do.  

My main LKO station has gotten so full of these darn shuttles it's hard to find a place to mark.  Still more are docked at the lunar stations, or just floating out in orbit waiting to ever be used. 

 

 

 

[SpacedCowboy]

 

Attaboy

Edited August 26, 2016 by SpacedCowboy
duh, I forgot

[Haruspex]

 Oh, my campaign game it a true space junkyard full of vintage stuff! here's some:

KSS Intrepid

 This ship was a part of my first successful (by pure chance) attempt to reach Duna. It was built back long before 1.0, so LV-Ns on it used LF+Ox and did not overheat. It also had no radioisotope generator and had to rely on solar panels for electricity. 40 ingame Kerbin years later, it still watches over Duna and the landers below.

Intrepid Landers #1 and #2

 KSS Intrepid carried two small landers that were the first Kerbal-made objects to reach the surface of Duna intact. There was no re-entry heat back then and no speed limit on parachutes in stock KSP, so one just had to deploy them like airbrakes at high altitude and glide down gently. Also note the cheap Stayputnik which later was made completely useless.

Duna Explorer

 The first manned craft to reach the surface of Duna, this was actually my standard Mun lander of the time, with some chutes slapped on top. It used LV-Ns for orbital maneuvering and the re-entry burn and then landed just like the smaller Intrepid probes. Of course, there's the Stayputnik, complete lack of any atmospheric shielding and LF+Ox tank for the old LV-Ns. But it already was thermoelectric-powered: the science data from the Intrepid allowed to complete the research tree.

 The first Kerbal to step on the surface of Duna was Deslo Kerman. Unfortunately, he also the first to die there. Some 30 years later, when EVAing to complete yet another contract, he slipped on the ladder and fell right on the faceplate of his helmet. RIP Deslo Kerman; the grateful Kerbalkind named a class E asteroid after you.

 Deslo's flag still lies there, half-buried in the sand. It used to stand for four decades, but after a physics update it fell over. 

Ike Explorer

 On nearby Ike, yet another silent monument to Kerbal bravery looms: a Munar lander similar to the one on Duna. Dunrick Kerman spent some 25 years living in it. But his story had a happy end: he was rescued by the Third Interplanetary and became not only the first Kerbal to land on Ike, but also the first to return home from there with a backpack full of rocks!

III Interplanetary Expedition

 Third Interplanetary Expedition was conceived after the ISRU technology became available, as the first attempt to not only reach the distant planets, but actually refuel there and return back. The main goal was to test the technology that would be later used for Jool, but also to rescue the crew of the Intrepid and the brave Dunrick. The expedition was a total success. The ship was kept in  Kerbin orbit after the return and stays there ever since.

Kerbin Orbital

 A partially dismantled core of the space station built for the challenge. I kept it as a reminder why I got that badge, but never
 found any actual use for it.

IV Interplanetary Expedition Orbiter

 The science orbiter module - almost similar to the one that's part of the III IPE above - is all that's left of the ill-fated IV Interplanetary Expedition. Gilly's low gravity (and the bugs!) turned out to be much more treacherous than expected.

 The lander was unable to affix itself permanently to the surface of Gilly and kept sliding around as the asteroid rotated, overstressed landing legs wobbling dangerously. Refueling was a nightmare. EVA ended in disaster as Sanly Kerman fell on a lander's leg and it exploded, killing the poor kerbal. Luckily, the gravity was so low that the loss of one leg did not affect the lander much and it was still able to take off normally. I was happy to finally leave this potato of death behind forever...

 ...I am sure that the ongoing V Interplanetary Expedition to Jool will scatter even more junk across the system to tell stories about!
 

[Crown]

I have two space stations orbiting Kerbin at an inclination of about 51° that are unmanned. Mostly because there's no science to be gained when at this inclination but it's harder to reach them. But it was fun to try to put them up there. I am still unsure whether I should de-orbit them or leave them for future use. A third space station with 0° inclination serves a real purpose as a pit stop between the surface and Mun.

Several satellites are orbiting Kerbin, unsused. I once set up a GPS constellation of satellites, a space telescope, and some pseudo-communication satellites. I don't use any mods that involve telecommunication, so they are useless junk. At one point I classified them all as "debris" so they might be still out there or been deleted by the game.

Apart from parts scattered around on moons and planets, I mostly now try to avoid space debris or at least put them in an orbit that reaches into the atmosphere. I once landed on Minmus and detached a stage during final descent. No all of it exploded on impact and decoupler fulfilled the contract "Land on Minmus" while I was still 900m above the surface.

High in Mun orbit there are some ships that have no use any more - but could still be used if needed somewhere (that's why they are not "debris"). A graveyard orbit if you will. Most of them are landers for Mun that were replaced by a better version and some buses that are too large now because I don't need to send a huge number of personnel. A bit lower there are some refuelling ships waiting to be send down to the Mun station but in the process of setting up mining for contracts I probably don't need this anymore.
On the way to an eternal waiting orbit are right now two ships that can take one Kerbal and land him back on Kerbin. These are leftovers from test for a ship needed to bring the engineer on a Minmus mining outpost back home. Thinking about it, I could have changed the inclination of these and sent them to Minmus. Oh,well

Some contracts involved putting something into Sun orbit. So I have put them into Sun orbit and their apoapsis high enough that they will return in about 5 Kerbin years and at least burn up in to atmosphere.
A test ship, containing some Kerbals, that as originally as mission for Duna, bringing a HUGE space station there, is also on such a trajectory. I still need a way to get these guy out of the ship but I don't know if it has enough dv for an orbit insertion. With the changes to the physics, I fear a little to get control of this ship. I had some explosions on pre-0.90 when I switched to them in v1.1.2.

There's one ship that will never come back. It was several versions ago, a rocket ready to go to LKO was standing on the launch pad. After a glitch it was on its way out of Kerbin orbit at 8'000m/s, together with seven proud Kerbals. I wonder if the ship someday will touch a solar system border.

And of course there are a tons of flags, rovers, and parts on Mun from a bunch of missions to the poles, archs, Apollo recreations. Maybe I will put them all in the "debris" folder once, but for now they are just sitting there in the dark and cold.

Edited August 27, 2016 by Crown
more information added

[NSEP]

I have some launcher test vehicles in LKO, waiting to get somewhere. I could de-orbit them, but i could also send them to another planet, because most of them have plenty of delta-v.

[StahnAileron]

I made a probe-rover for Mun Contracts (KSP 1.0.5 + plenty of mods - relevant in this case, DMagic Science). This was my first dedicated and executed foray with rovers. I figure I'd use this rover to do any Mun surface contracts I got (ignoring the driving times it could take). Didn't work out as planned.

I had 2 Mun contracts, so decided to land near one set of waypoints and then drive to the other (about 120 or so klicks away.) It was a night-time landing. Got the first contract done well enough, so I decided to drive for a bit to make progress toward the other contract's waypoints. First, I rigged the lights wrong: I couldn't see far enough in front of me. Second, it was hilly. I actually flew off a hillcrest at one point. (A "test run" with a previous version of the rover taught me to add airbags from USI's DERP/Exploration packs... But to save weight, I removed the VTOL engines on the rover itself because my launcher was WAY over-engineered. The upper stage could handle everything I needed once in orbit.)

Being it was darker as I was having some close encounters, I left the rover to handle other missions/projects while I waited for day time (Rover is powered by NFT RTGs with NFT Batteries as buffers for wheel power.) Some events later, I return to the rover in daylight... To find I'm in a deep crater within the larger East Crater Biome. I'm at the edge of said crater and can't climb out on wheels. (KER is reporting 25-30 degree surface inclinations.) And I was dumb and removed the engines I used to have on it... Going up is out, but going down to backtrack a new path is proving hazardous. (Several rage-quits at 30m/s road bumpings...)

For now, it's an abandoned endeavor until/unless I figure out how to salvage the project somehow (read: get the rover out of the Eastern Crater area), give up and destroy it, or literally salvage the rover. (The latter is unlikely unless I install something like EPL. It's an expensive rover given the experiments and RTGs on it, though.)

I'm debating whether or not to build another, heavy-duty explorer/contract probe rover with ISRU and engines for better biome hopping/travel or just make a pure ISRU biome hopper. Or just say screw it to planetary surface contracts outside Kerbin itself. I have yet to leave the Kerbin system other than a long-term Solar Survey Probe. That was an engineering and orbital mechanics puzzle. Apparently I didn't read the contract well enough and/or didn't connect a few things. I needed to get the probe into a 60 degree inclined, 0.40 eccentricity solar orbit that dips into low solar orbit. Polar orbits around Kerbin are easy... The friggin' sun? Not quite, at least if you wanna do it relatively efficiently/effectively without lots of time spent on coordinating gravity-assists. Got the stand-up guy into the orbit I needed, though... Let's see if it survives the periapsis (Why is low solar orbit so low? 1 million klicks...) If it burns up when I switch to it as active, it'll be another abandoned (or aborted) mission. Unless I manage to re-purpose the probe. (Considering the high inclination orbit it's in, I doubt it.)

[purpleivan]

On 23/08/2016 at 9:14 PM, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

I have abandoned games, (my 0.25 game with a fleet of 12 ships arriving at Jool, I gave up when 1.05 was out)

In my current game? no, a couple of kerbals I haven't rescued, yet. but they are not abandoned!

Same here, in that I've started out on non stock planetary systems (RSS and New Horizons) but after a few days didn't get into playing them too much before deleting those game folders.

So I guess I have a couple of incarnations of Jeb et al stuck in some kind of Kerbal limbo.

[suicidejunkie]

The SSTM Enterprise is currently laying in a field on the back side of Kerbin, abandoned as a museum piece with zero visitors each year.

Jeb was aerobraking it on a Minmus return, and discovered the thermal limits.  After an abort to orbit with only one wing, the trainees and tourists abandoned ship and were returned to KSC aboard two other spaceplanes.

Jeb set the ship on a suborbital trajectory and armed the emergency chutes before locking the doors for the last time, and then joined the rescue team.  On the upside, this first test of the safety systems went well, and the vehicle lost only two parts on impact.

 

In LKO, there is a small fuel tanker with about 1200 LF +O.  It was launched by accident instead of an orbital rescue vessel.  Rather than wasting the fuel, Valentina abandoned the ship and joined the rescuee in returning to Kerbin with the actual rescue ship launched next.

 

On Mun's north pole, there lies a set of three landers in various states of disassembly and a large stockpile of empty FL-T400 tanks.  A mission there to deploy a remotetech comms relay went as expected when the return vehicle tipped over on landing, just like the previous four identically equipped munar missions to different locations.  However this time, the engineer was unable to right the vehicle for ascent and exploded the fuel tank while trying.  Two additional identical ships were sent to assist before the politicians grudgingly signed off on sending a more advanced Rockomax-based design to pick everyone up.

 

On Minmus, there are the Extraplanetary Launchpad rovers "Minmus Mobile Factory MK II" and "MMF IV", which are now functional stationary bases that are unlikely to ever see use again.  MMF V has yet to lose attitude control and acquire a sudden need to build its own replacement, but the engineering team is statistically expected to complete their equatorial Elcano aboard MMF VII sometime in the next 30-60 days.

[Space20]

I tried to make a rocket to escape the blast of a nuke.

 

Lets say jeb now lives with the fishes.

[AstroBovice]

Ares II, the second mission to Duna was meant to be a stand alone science lab, so I intended on leaving it there. Unfortunately  I grossly underestimated the amount of power it would take to transmit the data back. So now I have a lander with 500 science but not enough power/ power generation to sent it back to Kerbin. Of course couldn't leave my crew of scientists there, so (before I got KAS) I sent a modified Crater Crawler, landed it 50 km away (woo!) and picked up the crew to be taken home by another mission soon. Eventually I will retrieve the science, but it will be a for-fun mission in the future. As for now, Ares II Lander remains abandoned. 

[Corona688]

On 8/25/2016 at 7:54 AM, cantab said:

I suppose it depends what you mean by "abandoned". In my current save I have plenty of orbiting and landed probes that have finished their primary mission but stick around and are operable if I want. But since I'm playing Science not Career there's little reason to touch them. I also have ascent stages from Kerballed landers, which again could technically be used again for something but probably never will.

But my biggest abandoned thing is Harvester Station. A science station in Mun orbit, the last Kerbals departed it when I felt I'd had enough science out of it. It stayed in Mun orbit until a bug with my modded solar system kicked it out, then I used the station's engines and gravity assists to relocate it to Serran orbit and refuelled it there, but I've yet to reoccupy it with Kerbals.

someone in the fanfic forum could stretch an epic out of that one, I'm sure.

[goldenpeach]

Basically, everything that I can de-orbit without problem will be de-orbited(e.g. a science station in orbit that I no longer need will be de-orbited with the return ship if I have enough ∆V to do so). Otherwise, I just leave it where it is without worrying about it.

I don't I tend not to de-orbit spent stages, just because I'm too lazy to do the burn, and leave probes/base alone once they did their business(i.e. I don't deliberately crash them at high speed to destroy them).

[Kertech]

I have many abandoned saves, which I guess must mean they're full of abandoned ships. 

[Nuclearsheep]

I have a few rovers abandoned on eve, because travelling takes forever. I also have a very large space station in orbit that i abandoned because it was too laggy.

[JP76]

Only 20 odd hours played so far, and I already have 5 pieces of debris in orbit if that counts! 

A few decouplers from contracts, a Terrier engine complete with empty fuel tanks, and an SRB! I love how they are persistent, but Im sure the time will come when you need to get rid of stuff.

J