Debris fails. Been hit by debris? Post here!

[FiresThatBurn]

I guess this fits the forums...If this is already created or doesnt fit please delete it mods

Title says it all.

[Sanguine]

I once had a piece of debris go RIGHT through the middle of an experiment at sending a rather large rover attached to a heavy-lifting tug, on it's way to Duna. I have no idea how it could have happened! I had never been to Duna before on that save, I hadn't had anything on any excessive escape velocity, I never even saw what it was. All I know is I was about to start my reverse-burn and achieve a stable orbit, and bam, I was ripped in half and had a bunch of Kerbals die.

Illuminate alienes?

[tntristan12]

It sounds like the kraken attacked, Sanguine. Actually hitting debris with anything is very, very hard. I tried to do it intentionally with a satellite designed to launch hundreds of decouplers into orbit and tried to put it on a collision course with another vessel. I eventually got to the point where I was putting the two ships on a collision course and launching the debris as I passed by. I was lucky to even get a single hit! The only time I ever got a mission kill from a debris launcher was when I triggered the debris at less than 100 meters in passing. Hardly what I'd call Kessler Syndrome.

However, one time I had a rather numerous incident where I crashed a ship into the space station I just undocked from a couple orbits previous. The station was far enough away that I didn't actually think I was going to hit it.

[Northstar1989]

@Sanguine

That sounds more like the Kraken, are you *sure* it was debris? (EDIT: Ninja'd by tntristan12)

@OP

I doubt you'll get many replies to this thread, as the chances of getting hit by debris in KSP are probably less than the chances of getting hit by lightning (twice), unless you intentionally go about trying to create Kessler Syndrome. You might be interested in this article on real-life space debris though:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html#.VAa5kWMzK7s

Or this website that tracks debris re-entry:

http://www.satview.org/decay.php

Regards,

Northstar

Edited September 3, 2014 by Northstar1989

[merendel]

I dont think I've ever had an actual debris "Hit" that caused damage. I've had stray bits of ship bump back into my station a few orbits later after it was released but those were all basicly items on the same orbit drifting into eachother at sub 1 m/s velocities. Its just so rare to have debris hit anything at significant velocity when its not on rails (and those dont count). theres just too much space out there for colisions to be common unless your trying. A fraction of a second or a few mm/s is often all it takes to seperate a hit from an object that will swing nearby every so often but never hit in a hundred years.

For me all midspace colisions are, in order of how common:

1 Overly agressive dockings (should have slowed down sooner)

2 Undocking and accidently throttleing up before turning away from previously docked target

3 undocking, waiting an orbit for a manuver node, and then burning before noticeing the station/mothership has drifted back in front of me agian.

4 missile target practice (surprisingly low hit percentage per number of shots fired)

5 subset of #3 where I've goten an interplanetary ship into orbit, jetisoned the empty launch stage, and then by the time the escape burn comes up find out its managed to drift into perfect alignment for a ramming and not notice till impact (only happend once) Come to think of it this is probably the only situation that actualy qualifies under what the OP was talking about as it was a bit of debris that destroyed my ship. It just never would have happened if I hadn't been burning at the time.

I'm also not counting faild landings on this list, too many ways for that to happen As you can see most collisions are more negligence on the part of the pilot than anything else

Edited September 3, 2014 by merendel

[Cirocco]

While I haven't had the debris hit me, I have had a few instances where I was sweating a little. This was all in my first couple of saves when I was just getting into the game and didn't care much about debris. Because I was still new and a lot of missions failed (sometimes intentionally), I did a TON of launches, and all of them the same way: 90° and a gravity turn, circularise around 75km. I also staged like a madman in an attempt to get maximum efficiency out of my rockets. This all meant that after a while I had a ton of debris flying around in an equatorial LKO at 75km. It came to the point where in about half my launches, I would see a piece of debris flying past.

Once, a piece came within 2 km of the rocket. Now, you may think 2 km isn't close at all, but when you compare that to the vast distances you're dealing with on a planetary scale and add the fact that this thing was a fuel tank zipping by at several hundred meters per second... well let's just say expletives were used on my part when I saw how close it came.

It was at this point that I decided to try and limit space debris.

[Heimdall5008]

I've taken a contract for a parachute test. So I strapped a probe core, the cute and a booster together. After the booster burned out I decoupled it and tested the chute. Because the chute slowed me, the empty booster overtook the rest of the ship. No problem there. But after drifting down and landing I was hit by the decoupled booster stage. I wonder if I should have played lottery on this day

[Brapness]

Had a launch failure on a refueller that was headed to my space station. It broke up as it left the atmosphere basically leaving a field of debris on a sub-orbital trajectory. I then saw the icon from my station shoot past at about 500m/s, missing the debris field by 200m. That's the closest space debris collision I've ever had.

And another time on launch my rocket began to spiral so I fired the abort system. The two kerbals inside were fine until one of the solid rocket boosters, still firing, spiralled into them. There were no survivors....

[StrandedonEarth]

I've never been hit by debris although I've seen a piece drift by at less than 1km. OTOH I've had an experimental spaceplane (aren't they all?) experience a RUD during takeoff after hitting a piece of debris left behind from Jeb's last attempt to fly the previous iteration of said spaceplane. Jeb received quite a lecture from Gene Kerman about cleaning up after himself for that.

In all honesty it probably never would have gotten airborne anyway as it had already veered off the runway, but it was still intact and wing-level and clawing for the sky when it struck.

[Stratzenblitz75]

Does this count?

Stupid payload got in the way of my de-orbit burn...

[Minarkhaios]

I did once have a "too perfect" interception course.

I was piloting my huge loaded fuel tank from kerbin to the orbital refuelling station.

I did set the orbit to an interception with the last launcher stage and drop it (because turning this huge mass, even empty, is a bit too much).

During the deceleration phase, my tank was pushed (and heavily damaged) by the launcher passing by.

And the refuelling station was ... well ... some nice fireworks.

On the bright side, there was jebediah burning to death during forced re-entry (because destroyed reactors + no shield + deadly re-entry = another firework).

Still a great memory.

[tntristan12]

I did once have a "too perfect" interception course.

This happened to me on my house rules "no reverting" save. :|

Fortunately the station and ship that collided were both so huge, that the RAM-sucking explosion crashed KSP and when I reloaded I was at a place where I could avoid the collision. Never thought I'd be so happy to run out of RAM. lol

[FacialJack]

once, during launch, i see a debris at 50km, coming closer and closer as im taking altitude. He finally pass at 2.5km from my rocket.

That the bad side of close to always east launch, all ure rocket's debris have KSC on their trajectories

[cantab]

I've had the just-decoupled boosters clobbering the rocket (who hasn't ) and the accelerating into the thing I just undocked from, but no 'real' debris hits.

[Sanguine]

It sounds like the kraken attacked, Sanguine. Actually hitting debris with anything is very, very hard. I tried to do it intentionally with a satellite designed to launch hundreds of decouplers into orbit and tried to put it on a collision course with another vessel. I eventually got to the point where I was putting the two ships on a collision course and launching the debris as I passed by. I was lucky to even get a single hit! The only time I ever got a mission kill from a debris launcher was when I triggered the debris at less than 100 meters in passing. Hardly what I'd call Kessler Syndrome.

However, one time I had a rather numerous incident where I crashed a ship into the space station I just undocked from a couple orbits previous. The station was far enough away that I didn't actually think I was going to hit it.

I saw a white flash, so I'm not too sure if it was debris or the Kraken. I didn't have a serious look at the last part of the mission log, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't be able to distinguish one collision from another.

[Aragosnat]

Yeah. The only times I have been hit by debris is after staging in atmosphere or hitting my crafts together a little to hard.

[lazarus1024]

My two favorites are

1) A spent booster which had reached orbit tore straight through the solar panels on my space station about 30 orbits later right as I was about to dock the tug I had used from the space station to go get the new station module from a few kms away. Tore the station apart from the impact, even though it only hit the solar panels.

2) On one of my unconventional landers, I had "dropped" a large rover. In the process of doing that, the lander, now no longer useful, was throttled up and then the rover disengaged right before touch down (sky crane!). I rove the rover away and I guess the angle was just right with just enough fuel left. About 500m from the touch down site and maybe 2 minutes later, the sky crane crashed down ON the rover. (this was all on Dres). That makes it maybe once in 50 times I've used a sky crane where it ended badly (other than misjudging fuel, or descent velocity).

EPIC!

Honestly those disasters were so terrific they were wins in my book.

[Vallius]

I've never actually collided with debris from other launches, but I've had some close calls with debris from my first space station (broken solar panels). I made the mistake of launching the Milkyberry I in retrograde orbit. Naturally I took it down, but there are a couple bits flying around thanks to poor EVA coordination.

[Yakky]

I got inspired by reading this thread and just launched a rocket that deployed about 30 small probes, named Kessler-1 through Kessler-30, into westbound equatorial orbits (opposite to the usual eastbound direction). For the reasons noted above, I don't actually expect any impacts... but it sure is fun to watch them whiz past my other satellites at ridiculous speeds!

I'll of course post updates if anything interesting happens.

[Jean Deaux]

This is a wild freak of percentages I posted quite a while back and not really hitting debris, but it sure made a lot of debris.

[AlexanderB]

Wasn't there a bug just after persistence was added, where you could fly into your own debris cloud of the previous launch, even if you reverted? Perhaps the reason the 20 km limit for debris on rails was added?