Just doing a bit of housework in space

[jnbspace]

I'm trying this as a way to tidy up some of the junk that I have left in orbit ...

It's basically a big rocket carrying a framework which carries ten tugs each of which has a small fuel tank, rcs, remote control and a grabber unit. I won't use it for everything bunt I just wanted to see if the concept would work. I may have put the radial decouplers on back to front (well actually the right way around but I wanted them back to front but it should be fine as a proof of concept)

 

Edited June 10, 2019 by jnbspace
Noted design error

[jnbspace]

It works. The debris grabbed ....

and deorbitted ....

and now having proved that it works I shall ignore the whole thing because there is a lot of overhead in doing that for every piece of debris. Far better to design them to deorbit themselves.

 

[jnbspace]

Playing this last night I decided on a new approach while in career mode. I'm not going to go through the overhead of deorbiting all the junk but I will occasionally launch a bank of tugs and then immediately terminate that mission. At that point I have spent enough resource to warrant going into the tracking station and terminating 8 pieces of junk of junk that it could reach. Eight because that simulates a failed capture leaving both the original piece of junk and a tug in orbit. That now adds to my simulation a resource cost in leaving junk in space.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Neat!

I like the way it looks, I often do missions like this as well just for funsies.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Rocket In My Pocket