Have you ever hit space debris?

[Mr. Quark]

I have not, partly because I don't have anything that has much parts. I hope someone has a funny story about hitting debris in an interplanetary mission!

Edited July 12, 2016 by Mr. Quark

[miketheveeg]

came close a couple times... but i do remember dumping a stage.... not looking where i am about to burn... burn right into my dumped stage.. boom

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

It's basically almost impossible due to the way frames are calculated, plus the vastness of space.

The two objects in question will just "pass" right through each other if they are moving at any kind of real speed.

Only time you are going to run into debris is if you just detached it and suddenly slow down.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Ultimate Steve]

Yeah... I burn into discarded stages like @miketheveeg sometimes. However, I've never hit any proper space debris. Although, I was approaching a station once and discarded a stage before I go there... it almost hit the station

Although, a while back, there was this one guy who was going to Jool and hit Dres by accident... one in a million chance.

[RocketBlam]

6 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

It's basically almost impossible due to the way frames are calculated, plus the vastness of space.

The two objects in question will just "pass" right through each other if they are moving at any kind of real speed.

Only time you are going to run into debris is if you just detached it and suddenly slow down.

I don't think so. I've run into things I was trying to intercept before.  I've never accidentally hit something that I wasn't trying to get near, or hadn't recently detached.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

4 minutes ago, RocketBlam said:

I don't think so. I've run into things I was trying to intercept before.  I've never accidentally hit something that I wasn't trying to get near, or hadn't recently detached.

That's what I'm saying, it's hard enough to hit something in space if you are trying to.

The odds of accidentally hitting something are infinitesimally small.

If you aren't trying to rendezvous with it on purpose, the difference in speed is likely to be so great that the "collision" will happen so fast the game won't even recognize it's happened and the crafts will just phase right through each other. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of this actually happening in other posts around the forums, as this question gets asked quite a bit.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Norcalplanner]

I have hit the wrong key while docking, inadvertently creating debris which subsequently hit and damaged another part of the station. Oops.

[Brownhair2]

I staged while I was rendezvousing, and just about had the discarded stage hit one of the solar panels on the other ship. Retracted it just in time. I think you mean something more like Kessler Syndrome though.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Brownhair2

[Mr. Quark]

1 minute ago, Brownhair2 said:

Kessler Syndrome though.

Yeah, I do

[LVL 9001]

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Edited January 17, 2021 by LVL 9001

[Corona688]

The odds of something being in just the right orbit are minute, unless all your debris comes from the same place.  It's apparently possible, from evidence in the "do you suffer from space debris" thread.

The guy put up an upgrade for his space station after not playing for a long time, and didn't notice the velocity at intercept was suspiciously high...  For the heck of it he'd left the station orbiting retrograde.

Following that impact, there was enough debris in that particular orbit that rescue missions both prograde and retrograde just got fragged.

So in normal game, the odds are pretty much nil, but if you felt like it, you could make a "kessler challenge" for yourself by smashing big things in orbit.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Corona688

[Red Iron Crown]

I've had a few near misses (<1km separation between debris and active vessel) on a well-used save with a standard parking orbit after ascent. No collisions though.

I've also tried to do it deliberately in an ASAT-style mission but ran into the issue @Rocket In My Pocket describes: Even if I had what I thought was a valid intercept the sat would just fly through the missile due to stepwise physics.

[Artheus]

2 hours ago, Corona688 said:

The odds of something being in just the right orbit are minute, unless all your debris comes from the same place.  It's apparently possible, from evidence in the "do you suffer from space debris" thread.

The guy put up an upgrade for his space station after not playing for a long time, and didn't notice the velocity at intercept was suspiciously high...  For the heck of it he'd left the station orbiting retrograde.

Following that impact, there was enough debris in that particular orbit that rescue missions both prograde and retrograde just got fragged.

So in normal game, the odds are pretty much nil, but if you felt like it, you could make a "kessler challenge" for yourself by smashing big things in orbit.

this sounds pretty epic. I had three (two accidental due to bugs, one wanted due to a docking bug-It did not want to release, so I killed the messing probe,created lots of debris) explosions in space, all creating lots of debris, but this sounds more kerbal than anything I have ever heard of. Will try this some time.

[KerikBalm]

A while back I was having some close encounters within a few km or less, but that was a while ago. My current save has only a few pieces of debris left from early career... none of which are in LKO.

I no longer leave debris in LKO, so it hasn't been an issue in a long time

[kunok]

Similar to @Red Iron Crown make this steps to get lots of close encounters (1km or less) with debris:

1. Start a career with a very grindy difficulty

2.Try to harvest the money principally from sat contracts

3. Have a defined parking orbit for everything launched to an equatorial orbit (everything to KEO and the Mun)

4. Don't do anything to reduce the debris count

5 . Now you have an orbit very full of debris, that you use very often, so you will get close encounters often.

Is very scary, but as others said you can only hit something if the relative velocity is low, both objects need to coincide in the same frame

[Xyphos]

I once did a circulurzition burn into orbit, only to collide with a kerbin-bound asteroid that I wasn't aware of. it came out of nowhere and killed all 3 crew members on-board. I wish I had a video, but F3 explained what happened.

[Raptor9]

As with others, I've had a few near misses.  I normally have pre-planned orbital regions between 70 and 200 km altitude that I designate for dumping upper stages and such, others for orbital construction, and others still for low altitude space stations.

I've also tried an ASAT mission by launching a small missile from a supersonic fighter in a zoom climb.  Tried it a handful of times, only was able to achieve a direct hit once...it's hard. 

[SyzygyΣE]

I use something like Orbital Decay so the debris falls back down after a while. I'm playing with RSS so a Low Earth Orbit is around 250km–300km up. Anything around there falls back actually relatively quickly without any station keeping. For decommissioned geostationary satellites or other probes with a high orbit where the orbit doesn't really decay, I try to see if I can place them in a graveyard orbit. So yes, no problems for me. But then again, RP-0 is quite difficult and progressing through the campaign takes a while. I haven't gotten that many objects up there yet to the point that it clutters everything.

Edited July 13, 2016 by SyzygyΣE

[Guest]

Sadly no; I think it would be quite amusing. However I was just testing a vehicle I want to use for the Elcano challenge and was surprised to bounce off a piece of ground scatter. Dunno if this is stock now or from mods (I don't think I have any that would do this), but it's pretty nice.

[klesh]

3 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

I've also tried to do it deliberately in an ASAT-style mission but ran into the issue @Rocket In My Pocket describes: Even if I had what I thought was a valid intercept the sat would just fly through the missile due to stepwise physics.

Relevant link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0I-wFTMBCk

Scott Manley had to crank down the clock cycles in order to get his (opposite orbital direction) crafts to actually collide.  

[Curveball Anders]

I was a bit sloppy when delivering a re-supply ship to a station and dropped the lifter stage right before docking.

I did make sure that the spent stage wouldn't hit the station so I forgot about it.

Quite a bit (days/weeks) later I went back to the station only to find that spent stage slowly coasting by, missing the station with just 100-200m ...

I promptly took the station a couple of km higher

 

[kiwi1960]

There is so much space junk in my game that Mister Kessler would be proud....

I undocked from my space space and immediately started to deorbit... I took out a whole row of solar panels....

 

[mrclucks]

Back in .90 when I was just barely getting to orbit, I thought ' it would be cool to orbit around earth the opposite direction!'.  Needless to say it took several hours, and I had always insisted on 80km orbit with as much precision as possible.  I then thought to rendezvous with another craft I had that was in the same orbit and was very close to me.  Set the target and think that the game is bugging out due to such a high velocity when bam!! Direct hit and my game lagged wayyyyy down due to 300 parts or so exploding at the same time.  I learned my lesson after that and always put any retrograde orbiting craft on an entirely different altitude

[swjr-swis]

19 hours ago, Mr. Quark said:

I hope someone has a funny story about hitting debris in an interplanetary mission!

I try not to hit my debris. A time out works just as good, really. And I don't want them ending up in foster orbits.

Instead, I try to nurture my debris and help them grow into happy well adjusted space stations. Even the unplanned ones.

[NeoMorph]

I've been doing a burn to match velocities with a target and started ignition late and mid burn I have impacted with the station I was going to ressupply before now. I think I've done it around half a dozen times total while MechJeb has done it a whole lot more... especially when using the rendezvous autopilot. I tend to zero my relative speed at about a kilometre these days and move in more cautiously than I did in my early days. That way more Kerbals survive.

I've also had phantom force trigger when I was approaching a docking target and suddenly it would zoom off and cause all sorts of collisions. Worst one was when I was doing a landing and suddenly my entire base went KRAKEN and flinged everything in toward the sun... and entire base in microgravity bouncing off of each other on their way to a fiery death when seconds before they were on the surface of Minmus doing sod all.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE KRAKEN!