o.O Debris stable in kerbin orbit with atmospheric periapsis?

[qoonpooka]

So, I have some Kessler Syndrome building up now. I'd been doing a good job at ejecting launch stages in either sub-orbital, or aero-capture orbits but it seems that the latter is not good enough:

I have four pieces of debris whose Kerbin periapses are below 70km, two of them go below 40km, and yet after three days they haven't been captured or burned up. Is this a known bug? How are these items persisting with the atmosphere? They should've burned up or lithobraked by now, and how on earth do you clean something like that up? You can't follow it into orbit... you'll burn up instead...

Edited October 28, 2015 by qoonpooka

[Dangerous_Beans]

if things aren't the focused ship then the game doesn't check for aerodynamic drag, it just deletes them if they go too deep into the atmosphere. in the past the threshold for Kerbin was 30km, so provided the periapse is above that they are fine.

go watch the debris for an orbit and they will burn up / crash.

[sardia]

The engine doesn't calculate atmospheric drag on parts unless you focus on them. It just autodeletes items that get too close to a planet without actually calculating it. It's a neat trick if your ship is going to burn up on your next PE, you can switch to the space center, and timewarp past the atmospheric stage, which buys you more time to raise your orbit above the atmosphere. You have to plan ahead a bit though.

[Claw]

if things aren't the focused ship then the game doesn't check for aerodynamic drag, it just deletes them if they go too deep into the atmosphere.

Yes, when things are on rails, there are no aerodynamic calculations. The only difference from what you said is that the cutoff for deletion is actually based on pressure: 0.1 atmospheres, which is ~23km on Kerbin.

Cheers,

~Claw

[qoonpooka]

23km eh? HAH! Debris cuts in at 23.8. Welp. How close do I have to be to give it focus? Do I fly an airplane around under it, or try to orbit over it with it set as my target or something?

[mabarry3]

Can't you just go to the tracking station, target the debris, and hit "delete"?

[Reactordrone]

23km eh? HAH! Debris cuts in at 23.8. Welp. How close do I have to be to give it focus? Do I fly an airplane around under it, or try to orbit over it with it set as my target or something?

Just select the piece of debris in the tracking station and fly it.

[qoonpooka]

Just select the piece of debris in the tracking station and fly it.

No joy. Example object: a lone stack decoupler. It's damaged, I think, and when I started to fly it, it had overheat status. I followed it through two passes, it's apo never lowers, despite the visible shock heating effects from it's 40km dip into the atmosphere. It cleared up its overheat status while I watched too.

- - - Updated - - -

Can't you just go to the tracking station, target the debris, and hit "delete"?

Ah, yes. Yes I can!

[Lord Sander]

No joy. Example object: a lone stack decoupler. It's damaged, I think, and when I started to fly it, it had overheat status. I followed it through two passes, it's apo never lowers, despite the visible shock heating effects from it's 40km dip into the atmosphere. It cleared up its overheat status while I watched too.

I had a lone stack separator have its apo actually increase while going through the atmosphere.

[Skorpychan]

Can't you just go to the tracking station, target the debris, and hit "delete"?

That's the EASY method. I've got an ambition of a system that snags old fuel tanks, decouplers, stages, and the like, grabs them with a Klaw, and punts them into more desirable orbits or into the atmosphere.

[mabarry3]

That's the EASY method. I've got an ambition of a system that snags old fuel tanks, decouplers, stages, and the like, grabs them with a Klaw, and punts them into more desirable orbits or into the atmosphere.

I was considering launching a few ships in Kerbin orbit loaded with guns (BDArmory mod) and taking a more fun route : literally blowing them up as I orbit near them

[Snark]

I was considering launching a few ships in Kerbin orbit loaded with guns (BDArmory mod) and taking a more fun route : literally blowing them up as I orbit near them

Of course, in real life, that would be the worst possible thing you could do-- smashing one orbital hazard into thousands and thousands of orbital hazards is exactly what Kessler syndrome is all about.

Of course, going to the tracking station and just deleting the debris isn't exactly a real-life option either.

In KSP, orbital debris really isn't an objective problem: neither from performance (the debris runs on rails) nor from operational safety (space is big, the chance of collision is negligible). The game puts a default limit (250, I think) to stop things from getting seriously out of hand. In real life, the danger is generally not from the big chunks themselves (spent boosters, other satellites, etc.), but rather from the uncounted millions of tiny bits of debris that gets shed by the bigger pieces: paint chips, metal flakes, etc. That's not a problem in KSP, which neither includes micro-debris, nor even tests for collisions at all except for the currently controlled ship and whatever's within 2.3km of it.

So the only reason for dealing with debris is either out of a sense of tidiness, or just as an additional fun challenge to take on. (Which, of course, is what KSP is all about.)

[Alshain]

Pro Tip:

Sepatrons make great self-deorbiting upper stages.