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Have you ever tried CREATING Kessler Syndrome?


Sherlock21st

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I must be the unluckiest person around then, I have hit a fuel tank I left in orbit hit a ship I was taking up. I didn't get a screenshot of it though, but still the odds are nearly impossible to calculate that it will happen again. Especially now that I clean up the junk like someone with OCD LOL. :sticktongue:

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I've made a few attempts to deliberately do it, mostly creating massive sections of parts that fall apart into tiny pieces and spread out when action groups are triggered. It looks like you'd need hundreds of them sent into orbit in order to create a real problem.

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You can hardly cause an ablation cascade in KSP.

The game doesn't calculate collisions between objects away from the player, so debris will only start to split into more debris when the collision events happen near the object the player is focusing on. Otherwise they just pass through each other.

And even when the game would calculate off-screen collisions normally, the ablation cascade would fix itself rather quickly. The reason is that parts which collide with high speed just explode and disappear instead of breaking up into many small pieces. Also, the maximum number of fragments a vessel can break into is limited because parts can't break into two and just disappear in an explosion when the collision is fast enough.

That's a lot less dangerous than in reality where a vessel can break into thousands of centimeter to milimeter-sized fragments which would then take millenia until they grind each other into rather harmless dust-rings.

Edited by Crush
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I've had spent drop tanks from a space plane smash through solar panels. I've had an orange "Go Far" tank that I detached from a spaceplane (hooks to the underbelly docking port and travels with the ship to new destinations, providing mass quantities of fuel) that I shot straight through the command pod of a space station. I've put planes through my fuel station, shot down probe-core satellites that were full of science equipment, and had debris escape Minmus and enter a stable orbit.

However, that's far from Kessler Syndrome. That's (80%) pilot error.

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Best I've had is decoupling a payload, then not burning -- it was moving away. Warp to the other side of the planet, set up a maneuver node for the reentry burn, then back to camera view to look at the sightOHGODMOVEMOVEMOVE.

No Kessler syndrome, just basic orbital mechanics of very nearly aligned orbital planes.

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Closest I've ever come was a comms satellite do a 1.5km flyby while I was running docking maneuvers on my space station. Freaked me the heck out, but no damage.

In-atmosphere, I've had spent return tanks drop onto my capsule's head, sail within inches of one of the windows... I've also had a booster from a failed launch careen out of control and wipe out a spaceplane I had left parked on the runway.

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I love debris, just watching old stages serve as a monument to the Kerbal's Exploration into the final frontier. Evidence of my past missions there forever, either drifting through deep space or on another celestial body. I just wish it didn't lag so much, I would make clouds of debris around Kerbin, creating a kessler nightmare.

But I whack a kerball'd a command pod coated with batteries once and made a mass of batteries drifting through space, but that's it.

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I used to love creating rings of debris around my planets, similarly to you Cavenyanson; they served as reminders to past missions. However, I discovered quickly that they put more stress on my already straining laptop, and set debris to ~10. I do miss watching those little grey markers blaze by at ~4.5 km/s when in a retrograde orbit though--that is one of the scarier sights in the game.

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  • 1 year later...
8 hours ago, jebboss said:

A lost-on-eva Fredman Kerman somehow got himself stuck between two docking modules and managed to blow up and de-orbit my space station. And he survived reentry!

oh well

Man.. good necro! Nope Kessler does not have to worry. I tried it once all debris just forms a neat line after a while...

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On 12/15/2013, 8:27:22, Liowen said:

I must be the unluckiest person around then, I have hit a fuel tank I left in orbit hit a ship I was taking up. I didn't get a screenshot of it though, but still the odds are nearly impossible to calculate that it will happen again. Especially now that I clean up the junk like someone with OCD LOL. :sticktongue:

Wow!  I thought it was special when I had a spent upper stage come within 11km of my station, it certainly surprised me! :wink:   To have an actual collision is something else altogether.  

For my part, I haven't had a computer that could handle much debris until recently, so I've had to practice "eco-friendly" launches for performance reasons alone.

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I want to do a bunch of space battles and watch my orbit slowly fill up with debris :)

up to 40 debris now, with about 10 retired/broken/ughh not worth retrieving ships floating around

However, i didn't know that debris slowed down the game any measurable amount. How much debris does it take to start noticing the lag caused by it?

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4 hours ago, quasarrgames said:

I want to do a bunch of space battles and watch my orbit slowly fill up with debris :)

up to 40 debris now, with about 10 retired/broken/ughh not worth retrieving ships floating around

However, i didn't know that debris slowed down the game any measurable amount. How much debris does it take to start noticing the lag caused by it?

I've noticed a slight impact at over 400 but nothing gamebreaking. I also had Distant Object installed so I actually saw the objects instead of just markers.

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ksp engine is too slow for that... had to retire my savegame because I have about 200 "flights in progress" around kerbol system and when I start a launch game is just too slow to be playable

Edited by seyss
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Most of my debris rings in the past have been procedural fairings. But the new stock fairing aren't persistent. Anyone know of at mod that makes them persistent? Having a collision in orbit is on my ksp bucket list.

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