How 'environmentally conscious' are you?

[Rath]

I don't fire nukes below 10km(because headcannnon politics) crash spent stages into 'cities' (dots on a map) or blow up NERVAs, a Nerva must be soft landed with a rad shield

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

My concern for the environment ends at the borders of KSC, spent stages or debris landing outside of this zone are not in my jurisdiction and and any issues residents of Kerbin have regarding such matters should be taken up with their government representative and local sanitation department.

[swjr-swis]

I generally stay to the 'greener' side of this issue, but I'm not religious about it.

I try to build my rockets in ways that produce the least possible debris -debris in orbit annoys me- and find myself placing probe cores and 'chutes on suborbital stages even while playing without StageRecovery. I don't think I've ever fired nukes in any atmosphere, or dropped them anywhere. I've not yet premeditatedly deorbited anything that wasn't meant to land somehow (I know, that's a rather grey area when it comes to Kerbals), and I've sent up craft to recover or somehow reuse inert stages left behind in orbit - some of my space stations started service as a discarded LKO stage, which is either a cause or effect of my predilection for docking ports over decouplers.

On the other hand, I have also built and launched ridiculously over-boostered asparagus monstrosities that carpet-bomb the KSC with debris even before my payload has managed to start the gravity turn. The KSC has seen so many catastrophic explosions that the entire area must be more of a wasteland than Fallout 4. And lately I keep letting Valentina indulge in her newfound hobby of building bomber planes and long-range aircraft that leave droptank/bomb/rocket craters all over the planet surface.

I did one career playthrough back before 0.90, where I purposely littered LKO all over the place, decouplers and boosters and stages (oh my!), just to see how likely close encounters are. I never once came within visible range. So I discarded that as a gameplay factor, and opted for a cleaner map view and less lag. That counts as green, yes?

Edited December 3, 2015 by swjr-swis

[Itsdavyjones]

I generally try to keep my orbits clear, but it's not always possible.  In fact, the worst it has been was suddenly having a piece of debris fly past a launching rocket at around 500 m/s, passing within 1 km, kinda freaked me out, since I only saw it when it was 2 km out before it passed me.

[GoSlash27]

I run my program the same way 5thHorseman does his. I design my missions to never leave any debris in stable orbit anywhere.
 All discarded stages deorbit somewhere either by aerobraking or lithobraking.

In addition to this, I have very strict rules about about nuclear radiation. I never light off LV-Ns in Kerbin's atmosphere and I have heightened flight safety rules to ensure that LV-Ns and RTGs are never returned to Kerbin by design or accident.

My nuc stuff is treated with the same safety protocols I apply to kerbals for launch vehicles. No nuclear material allowed on board until the launch vehicle has been confirmed safe.

Best,

-Slashy

[Bluegillbronco2]

I always leave spent stages in orbit because there are places to explore in KSP that are more interesting then spending countless hours cleaning the hundreds of pieces of debris. I did have a close encounter with one. During the burn to put a satalite into "keosynchronous" orbirt  I got within 300 meters of a spent stage from my Mun program. What are the chances of that? But eventually when I abandon the the save I will have fun de-orbiting my space station and watching it fall apart.

[theend3r]

I collect debris (had over 500 one time), it makes the game more interesting. Plus my LKO serves as a museum of sorts. (We really need a stock museum building. )

[Hyomoto]

The planet?  CRATERS EVERYWHERE!  Space?  MUST. KEEP. CLEAN.  All recovered stages must naturally splash down or be recovered manually!  So the exact opposite of theend3r.  Though he makes a good point, space debris could be exciting.  I think I avoid it mostly because of potential lag.  Bring on 1.1!

[monophonic]

20 hours ago, theend3r said:

I collect debris (had over 500 one time), it makes the game more interesting. Plus my LKO serves as a museum of sorts. (We really need a stock museum building. )

I'm with you here. I am very conscious about how much space I have to fill with debris of all kinds.

[322997am]

I'm working on a plane+rover that can fly to a location pull all the trash into the cargo bay fly to the ksc and then leave it in a small heap. And then once in awhile I will take a leaf blower rover and blow the trash up.

[PanzerAce]

My last career wave that got lost in a HDD crash I didn't play green, just manually deleted everything. I'm thinking my next play through will be greener, but with orbital tugs with claws to de-orbit spent stages and the like where possible. Though eventually I'll build them be recovered under chute and power....