How 'environmentally conscious' are you?

[Workable Goblin]

I'm pretty tough on debris, since I've discovered that the game slows down noticeably if more than a dozen or two missions are running simultaneously. I assume debris has a similar impact, so I make sure to get rid of it right away. That being said, I like spaceplanes and SSTOs, which of course don't generate much debris.

[Whirligig Girl]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/kA9kkAS.gif[/IMG]

Once I did a kesseler syndrome thing. I used DistantObjectEnhancement to render the debris flares. That was a screenshot spam turned into a gif. Roughly 5x real time.

[AbacusWizard]

I used to just delete all debris with the big red X in the tracking station, but a version or two ago I decided to try manual removal with the H-Wing, a little two-seat fighter of my own design armed with the harpoon cannon from KAS. Turned out to be lots of fun. These days I'm generally designing my rockets in such a way that the last stage is jettisoned just before completing the orbit, so no debris is left for the H-Wing to clean up... except for solitary cockpits spawned by rescue contracts, of course.

[MGCJerry]

Slightly... My only 'rules' are to make sure my first stage is suborbital, and that my transfer stage crashes into the body I'm landing on. My lander fuel is used for further fine tuning, and the descent.

[GluttonyReaper]

[quote name='Aperture Science']-snip-[/QUOTE]

is it just me, or does that Kerbin look a little ... funky?

[SargeRho]

Very. I make sure that all of my stages are disposed of by dumping them either onto moons or into the atmosphere of planets, jettison fairings on suborbital trajectories, and I jettison all stages with enough fuel, where applicable, to de-orbit themselves. I don't ever drop nuclear stages, I always reuse those.

[InterCity]

Kreenpeace has filed several class action lawsuits against my space agency, but they've died of radiation exposure from falling NERVAs before the case made it to the court.

[Azimech]

I've used all kinds of test fuels like sacred plants, souls of the deceased, kerbal fertilized eggs and newborn, beer farts etc. all with varying results. Best I could come up with was a large pink cloud from which a blue acid rained for months in the Flower Hills of Kobl, turning everything into a steaming beige goo in the valley below. I was a bit disappointed with the result since it didn't taste like chicken when it hardened.

[ROXunreal]

I drop my garbage everywhere. I will deorbit if I have the fuel for it and if it's practical, if not...shrug.

Anything I have listed as a mission ion KSC that is actually debris without a control unit/signal/electric charge I abort.

[Just Jim]

Early career I'm a slob, and should be fined horribly for polluting the planet. lol
But now that I've got a space station around Kerbin to act as a base of operations, I may set up a Garbage retrieval shuttle of some sort. Something to go fetch staged objects, grab them, kill the orbit, detatch and reestablish orbit... then let the garbage burn up on re-entry.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

[quote name='cantab']I don't give a flying fig.[/QUOTE]

Yeah me neither. (almost)
Parts that doesnt explode after reentry will be salvaged though.
Also I try to keep my Nervas in constant flight (refueling the drive stages at a KEOstationary Orbit with Fuel I refined on Minmus) but only because they are freaking expensive. ;)

[Fenris]

[quote name='Aperture Science']Environmentally conscious, eh?

[url]http://i.imgur.com/OmyV3.png[/url][/QUOTE]

Your pic reminded me of Ring World. You could almost build a ring with all of that debris :D

I try to keep the space trash to a minimum:
1) For a bit of an added challenge ( I figure in modern day space exploration that would be a thing).
2) So I don't crash into anything. Once long ago I came within a few hundred meters of crashing into 8 empty orange fuel tanks that where in LKO, I think I was doing around 2,000 m/s at the time.

I could just delete everything at the space center .. but where i the fun in that? I usually have stuff crash into a planet or moon when I can and just tell myself everything burnt up in re-entry or was destroyed with a 100% efficiency on impact. I have deleted the occasional part that is lying on the ground and did not blow up though.

In trying to be environmentally conscious I almost killed some Kerbals a few days ago. I needed to orbit, land, and plant a flag on Minmus for a few contracts I combined into one mission. I was being lazy and just made an orange tank asparagus lifter. The last tank in that setup ended up being used to finish the orbit of Kerbin, a transfer stage, and a descent stage. I figured releasing the tank at about 2,500 meters above Minmus would destroy it ... it bounced ... almost straight up. There was a few panicked moments of seeing this orange tank with an attached Skipper coming straight for a craft that was about 1/4 of the tanks size. Luckily it missed by a few dozen meters :)

[mythic_fci]

I usually don't care a lot. Hell, my KTS just drops three huge empty tubes of metal onto Kerbin with no regard to the environment whatsoever. However, I usually try to ditch my stuff into the ocean when possible; if not (ex. a Munar transfer stage), I try to either crash it somewhere (the Mun) or let it fly out into a distant solar orbit.

[EdFred]

What major cities?

[Mjarf]

I don't care about damaging the Kerbin environment or whatever, Kerbals are hardy people, they'll manage. I like to do things neatly though, so I usually discard spent stages in such a way that they either burn up in Kerbins atmosphere or crash into the Mun or whatever planet/moon/asteroid that's nearby.

[KerBlammo]

I try to keep space junk to a minimum. This means putting separtrons on upper stages to encourage them to re-enter Kerbin's atmosphere or crash on the Mun/Minimums/Duna etc. IF I'm sending up an un-Kerballed craft as part of an assembly mission I make sure the detached transfer stage is controllable and has enough dV to de-orbit itself.

I consider NRVs to be too valuable to discard so any one sent up is part of a reusable craft (often a un-Kerballed tug) and is put into some parking orbit for future reuse. This means if I am constructing a station in orbit around the Mun, after the first launch I just send each section into LKO and send the tug to get it and take it to the station's orbit.

[eddiew]

I spec my launch stages to be discarded at 100x18km, and use the Stage Recovery mod to have a fighting chance at getting them back :) Transfer stages are also the deorbit stage at the destination - assuming there's to be a landing. Otherwise the entire transfer stage is the orbiter.

TLDR; no space junk, don't care what crashes on other planets, anything landing at Kerbin is recovered.

[peachoftree]

Let's just say that kerbals are green for a reason, and I may or my not have something to do with it. :blush:

[Superfluous J]

I try to never ever leave any debris in a permanent orbit of anything. I define "permanent orbit" as objects that will NEVER:
1) touch even the barest wisp of atmosphere.
2) hit the top of the highest mountain.
3) change SOIs. Ever.

If an object will do this, I will try very hard to not drop it and instead carry it until it is in such a state. I also try very hard to design my ships to not be in such a state. Any debris left in such a state must be manually collected. Any debris that does any of the 3 things above, I can delete without waiting for it to "naturally" decay, crash, or be ejected.

It's been over a year since I've had to manually collect a single piece of debris.

[luizopiloto]

I have a mining station at LKO powered by a Nuclear reactor... ( 72 RTGs )
Don't worry... I'll de-orbit it into the ocean when done... :P

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I don't think the Kerbals care!

They carry "Mystery Goo" to other planets! They expose it unknown environments, and then splash down the open container in their oceans. And that's when things go well!

Its surprising the entire species hasn't Darwined by now.

EDIT: I try to keep debris to a minimum.

[goldenpeach]

Am I environmentally conscious in KSP?

short answer: no

Seriously, I dumped nerva, non-burned fuel, RTD and more or less anything that was into a de-orbit trajectory for whatever reason(e.g: after de-orbiting my capsule) into kerbin.
As long as the vessel do what I want it to do, I keep it.

(as for debris, I kinda like having a lot of them: I just like the sight of all those debris in the map view and those rare close encounter with a debris. Thought I don't create a debris for the sake of creating one: I just don't do any effort in reducing the number of debris created).

[Threadsinger]

I tend to play a very environmentally conscious game. Probably because I work as an environmental scientist IRL, heh. I generally play with the following house-rules,  but I don't stress if I make exceptions, it's for fun after all (and I usually just hand-wave a reason why its ok, as long as the effort was made):

1. Every stage must return to Kerbin in a recoverable manner or be decommissioned into a designated disposal crater (ideally for later smelting and re-use). All my stages are designed with parachutes, and as technology permits, a probe core, power, and a fuel reserve for a powered/power-assist landing. All my landers return in one piece (no drop parts) or are launched and the deorbited in munar orbit into the aforementioned scrapyard. If I have to run a boot-strappy mission with low-tech (to gain science to do it better next time), I will adjust my trajectory accordingly to dump the transit stage/fairing/whathaveyou into the target planet or moon, then course correct back to a proper orbit.

2. No open-cycle nuclear engines in atmosphere, although I do make an exception for fusion drives and beyond. You will never see a fission Orion drive in my game. No sir. (Regarding their disposal, I recover all my stages or dump them in specific spots. I sometimes hand-wave by docking the vessel for a bit and presuming the fissionable/fusion/antiproton-contaminated materials are removed prior to disposal via some yet-undiscovered waste management magic).

3. Fairings, I let burn up, but must be ejected before orbital velocity is reached. Again, if I miss a few, I just delete them on the premise of "close-enough".

4. I don't play with life support mods very often, but I do try to design spacecraft large enough to give the crew a reasonable amount of living space/storage supply space. 

I guess my gameplay represents my real life thoughts on space exploration, but I don't adhere to it religiously nor expect anyone else to. It's still fun to occasionally design big spaceships with massive, ejectable asparagus tanks which detach as the ship burns through fuel - love that ka-chunk sound.

[TyrannoFan]

I leave debris around planets, because I don't want to just magically delete them, but I'm too lazy to grab them or destroy them by other means. However, if, say, a used lander has no further purpose and it has a probe core or something and my Kerbal is returning in a different ship if there even is a Kerbal there, I deorbit it and let it crash into the surface or burn up in the atmosphere of the body it's orbiting. Because that's fun, and a quick and easy disposal method.

[steve_v]

I generally try to dispose of debris, but it's mostly for game performance and kessler-avoidance reasons... I don't thing e.g. arranging things such that my transfer stages impact the destination body is "environmentally friendly" but it does cut down on clutter. Anything non useful left in orbit is, to me, a reminder that I screwed up the mission planning somewhere.

It also makes for less confusion in the tracking station, as I am rather lazy about naming missions and sometimes I need to go back for that "debris" object that really isn't debris.

The whole magical "terminate flight" option has never really worked for me - on click cleanup feels too much like cheating.

Edited December 3, 2015 by steve_v
Stupid editor being stupid again, maybe I should put this in my sig and save time?