Kessler Syndrome

[Geher]

I never really cared about debris and now there's quite some in LKO. But I never went into any. Space is big.

[Warzouz]

I experienced kessler syndrome the other day when I fatfingered the "Z" key instead of "A" while docking two very large ships with big engines.

I've learnt the hardway to shutdown all engines before docking...

[Kobymaru]

I usually do this while I wait for maneuvers on missions. A lot of the time I figure it's wasted effort. Am I literally just wasting time doing this?

Yes, yes you are.

Then again, so am I. I just can't live with simply clicking the X-Button in the tracking station, it feels like cheating. When I play other games, I sometimes let KSP run in the background at 4x time accel. to deorbit old debris.

Recently I have taken to using my SSTO's launches that have delivered payloads to de-orbit derelict ships piece-by-piece. Sometimes they even pay for the whole mission!

[Terwin]

Soooo.... this got me thinking.

They say during a major meteor impact event, the debris falling back to the planet would ignite fires all over the place and raise the atmospheric temperature a significant amount.

Sooooo... let's say you made a big enough kessler bomb. Took it to a high enough orbit, but with a low enough pe to re-enter, to carry some serious momentum and fired off your bomb as you approached re-entry. Could you have a similar affect on a smaller area, such as a target city? Or would the energy required to get said vehicle to orbit negate any energy you added/returned to the planet? Or would the different types of energies involved (fuel is potential, re-entry/impact is thermal/kinetic) not be offset as they were stored differently?

Just a random thought, probably troll physics at play, but a thought none the less.

You need large solid pieces with plenty of mass if you want them to survive reentry in the real world, otherwise they would just burn up in the atmosphere.

I think the 'falling debris' involves multi-ton chunks of rock which heat up enough during re-entry to melt/ablate large chunks of its surface, heating the rock substantially.

As this would effectively be large chunks of semi-melted rock landing over large areas, I can see why it would cause lots of fires...

I can't see a man-made craft having enough mass for this to be a useful mode of attack, especially when precisely guided 'rod of god' style attacks would be so much more effective for less cost.

[Corw]

You need large solid pieces with plenty of mass if you want them to survive reentry in the real world, otherwise they would just burn up in the atmosphere.

I think the 'falling debris' involves multi-ton chunks of rock which heat up enough during re-entry to melt/ablate large chunks of its surface, heating the rock substantially.

As this would effectively be large chunks of semi-melted rock landing over large areas, I can see why it would cause lots of fires...

I can't see a man-made craft having enough mass for this to be a useful mode of attack, especially when precisely guided 'rod of god' style attacks would be so much more effective for less cost.

Two words. Tungsten rods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

[GarrisonChisholm]

I had the same thing! Atmosphere didn't do much for it, but the orbit seems unstable if you look at the precise numbers.

Even if it's physic-less, drag should still be calculated if I understand correctly.

I eliminated my "should-have" de-orbitted debris by selecting them in the Tracking Center and "riding" them for 8 or 9 orbits until they de-orbitted.

[PB666]

i have three points that i jettison, one is when perigee is at or slightly below 69k, the second is when mun perigee is suborbital, all you have to do is give a couple dv to the payload snd its back in safe orbit again. if you are going to the mun or minums you have to plan your launch sobthat you are close to a transfer window, this way when you jettison mid transfer burn its on a suborbital with kerbin. If you are going to eve or moho you need to launch at just before dawn and again you can separate on a suborbital and payload on. If you are going to duna or beyond launch just before dusk and same thing. Dont separate on a through atmosphere long suborbital because these things travel pretty fast and ksp warps them through the atm with no delta- v losses. The hko satellite missions i keep often enough fuel to eject them into ip space, lko burn then to decay.

[Gargamel]

Two words. Tungsten rods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

That's kinda what I was thinking.... Have a high speed re-entry with a few thousand of these raining down on a city....

[Terwin]

That's kinda what I was thinking.... Have a high speed re-entry with a few thousand of these raining down on a city....

It seems like a disintegrating craft around your rods would make them fairly randomized in where they hit, if you are going to have a number of atmospheric penetrators like this, why not just do the Rod of God approach where most of your targeting stays up in orbit and you launch highly accurate rods one at a time at specific targets?

[Gargamel]

Who needs accuracy when we're going for mass destruction over a city sized area?