Have you ever had a non-intentional collision in orbit?

[hobbsyoyo]

No, I have never been hit by debris. Heck, I have even tried to shoot down a defunct orbiter and missed it by a half a meter!

[wminsing]

My closest call was a manned mission that accidentally ended up within a kilometer or two of a satellite I had launched a few missions before, while the manned mission on the way out of the moon. Would have been a perfect rendezvous, if I actually WANTED to visit that satellite.

-Will

[PTNLemay]

You guys are making me want to fill my sky with debris... this sounds like fun.

1 problem though, what happens if the objects hit one another while the world is loaded, but when I'm not looking at either of those parts. For example if I'm sitting on the launch pad accelerating time and waiting for a launch window. If during that time two objects in orbit intersect, will they just pass through one another?

[Madrias]

I put one of my spaceplanes through my space station. I sent up the pieces of the station all in a nice, stable orbit, one segment at a time with a carrier spaceplane. The day I go to add crew to the station, I decided to be fancy (read: stupid) and launched myself retrograde to the station. Muscle memory from the previous 30 flights kicked in and I came in for docking... At 1200 m/s. In a space plane. That happened to be powered by a solitary LV-909.

I also play by my simple rule of "all debris in orbit stays in orbit until I personally de-orbit it."

I broke that rule after losing 5 spaceplanes to the ever-expanding debris field of probe cores, fuel tanks, docking ports, three probe-rovers, and a handful of capsules.

I pulled down everything I could think of that might hurt a space craft, then built another station.

I lost that station to a battery I didn't think to de-orbit because it was 'too small' to 'cause a problem'. Yeah, I made a new save file after that. I was not going to pick some 300 odd pieces of debris out of Kerbin Orbit. Maybe once Squad adds in a way to just nuke the debris field, I'll go back to it.

After that, I've been particularly picky about making sure I clean up after every mission. Two separate stations, both wiped out by me being foolish and leaving debris in orbit.

I've also had some fun with 0.22 and the amusement caused by me not cleaning up the orbits because some of that debris still has science in it (second run through of Career mode, where I'm back to my rule of "what's in orbit stays in orbit until something de-orbits it" because I'm crazy like that.

[njd]

I once had an orbiter get rear-ended by the ascent stage I'd just jettisoned because its engine was still running on the last dregs of fuel. I burned the orbiter's engine for a few seconds, then shut down and let it drift high around Kerbin. Next thing, the spent FL-T800 came into view and rammed it.

Everything exploded. It was spectacular and hilarious.

[hobbsyoyo]

You guys are making me want to fill my sky with debris... this sounds like fun.

1 problem though, what happens if the objects hit one another while the world is loaded, but when I'm not looking at either of those parts. For example if I'm sitting on the launch pad accelerating time and waiting for a launch window. If during that time two objects in orbit intersect, will they just pass through one another?

Yes they will go through each other on time warp. I have accidentally warped through planets that way XD.

[SRV Ron]

Here was one close call upon reentry to Laythe; The booster came flying by the lander several minute after staging.

[MarkyJ279]

After landing a manned science lander on Minmus, I realized I hadn't attached attached a probe core to my orbiter section I needed to get back to Kerbin. This meant it was difficult to see and I couldn't use the target function to make the rendezvous and docking easier. I had to cross my fingers and rely on gut instinct, manual controls and MK1 Eyeball.

To my credit, my intercept was on course.

It was, in fact, so on course that I actually ended up colliding with it while trying to raise my periapsis and match orbits. A relatively slow speed collision but enough to tear an engine, landing gear and science jr off my lander and take a few solar panels off the orbiter. I had enough rcs reserves to dock with that so I made it back safely and immediately stuck a stayputnik on the orbiter!

[wminsing]

Hah, that does remind me that I've nearly got nailed by a spent sustainer stage as I adjusted my orbit several times!

-Will

[Beachernaut]

Yup, I hit my station with a smaller ship during an orbital rendezvous. I was matching orbits and killing relative velocity after doing some catch up. In the map view I was orienting my ship when I heard BOOM followed by my navball spinning wildly. I jumped out of the map to find my command pod and monotank spinning wildly with a rather large debris field surrounding it. I worriedly switched view to my station to find that one of 3 fuel tanks was missing. I'm guessing that my ship colided with the fuel tank somewhere between 60-100ms velocity relative to the station. Luckily the command pod still had it's chutes and 3 of 8 RCS thrusters left so I was able to deorbit and save Jeb and Bill.

I've yet to replace that fuel tank on the station. It serves as a reminder to be patient.

[thunderstar]

few versions before, around .19 i had lots of debris orbiting kerbin, it was a mess and every time i launched i saw the debris passing really close to the ship, they never got to the 2.5 km physics range but they kept appearing and appearing, never crashed with one of them tought, after that i kept my debris count low so now it seems very unlikely

[hobbsyoyo]

I actually turned off orbital debris a while back. I did that not because I didn't like the challenge of having to deorbit it but because of the hassle of trying to select the exact orbit line of my ships/stations when there are so many other orbital lines due to all the debris in similar orbits. If they had an option to hide orbital lines of debris unless we check an option box to enable it, then I probably won't ever turn debris back on.

[baal70]

never had a debris collision, yet atleast. But this made me think of this

hehe

[Arkantos22]

I left one of my Jool mission ships in orbit. Somehow, it had gotten into a retrograde orbit (probably because I wasn't paying attention to the transfer too much) of 100km x ~1000 km. My largest station at the time orbited at 125km prograde. I was docking the second of two of my service crafts, a practice I adopted both from experience and from copying some real-world protocol of always having a way for the crew to get home. When it was about 50m out from the station, the interplanetary roars in at a wild speed and clips the solar array and fuel tank sections of the station, destroying them and throwing the whole station into a fairly fast spin. It hit the service ship and knocked it away about 400m before I got the spin under control enough to zero out my relative velocity. In the impact, the ship's docking port and parachute were destroyed. I had to launch two rescue missions to get all the Kerbals before deorbiting my now-useless and horribly unbalanced station. I was sad that day. I haven't left a ship in orbit when I'm done with it since.

[Ekscalybur]

no i've never had so many things in orbit at once to collide.

I'm the same way now.

I wasn't before.

I moved a newly coupled station into a circular orbit, only to watch the old part get obliterated by the final lifting stage of the new part. From that point on, the first thing I do when launching KSP is to go to the tracking center and clean up any debris in orbit or anywhere else for that matter. I was literally heart-broken after that collision happened, it was the first time I docked anything and didn't look like a complete amateur doing it. Then I realized who exactly was the person responsible for leaving those tanks and engines zipping around.

[Mr. Scruffy]

In all honesty: I dont know, for sure, if that ever happenend to me. I think it did, once. But it happenend so fast, i am not certain.

[Xetalim]

I never had a collision with anything, luckely:D

[Jestem]

I recently managed to get a pass between two satellites of 8km, which was more than close enough thank you very much

[-RanZ-]

I have intentionally put two rockets in opposite orbits and try to make them collide... it's a lot harder than you think, I was never successful.

[Newnard]

I had one design that ejected a cloud of about 36 pieces of junk all at once after achieving LKO, then one of the fuel trucks sent up to top it off hit one of them a few hours later while trying to meet up in orbit.

[Jacob01]

I try to de-orbit any debris which is going to get in the way of anything orbiting, however, I have had a one or two of collisions.

Once my space station got hit by the orbital maneuver stage of one of the rockets which took things up to the station. It unfortunately hit the center of the station, which was where a lot of the parts were docked to, so the whole thing just fell apart. It was quite funny to watch though!

I had a close encounter with a rover, which for some reason was in LKO. I think it was from one of my Mun missions which I had wrongly staged, so the rover decoupled with the lifter.

Jacob

[NASAFanboy]

Well, my "Kessler Bomb"released more than 600 pieces of large debris over Gilly. I followed it up with a second and third Kessler bomb, spraying a total of 2851 parts over Gilly. Oddly enough, collisions are still rare.

[krona14]

I had just gotten my big interplanetary rocket finished to go to Jool when a massive fuel tank from an asparagus staged rocket hit it and kill all of my 20 kerbals! I was going to make a base on Laythe. since that tragic indecent I have not yet re-constructed my massive rocket.

[Rufus Callahan]

Never tried this but if you want Space Debris to take you down, you should go for Kessler Bombs. Instead of going 90° at Launch, you should take them 270° so the debris Comes right at you in Orbit

BTW. This is not my Album, just saw this on Reddit.

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ha once again i came to post my Kessler Bomb album and here it is in it's full glory already

[6677]

I did hit a satellite on a mun return once, cockpit and chute actually survived for a safe landing too, I almost didnt believe it myself, such a collosal area and 2 so insignificant objects at high speed and they still manage to hit each other.

I've had the odd mishap where a booster has decoupled while firing still, spiralled around the air, flown 100-200m away and then come straight back at you and taken you out.