Have you ever hit space debris?

[Curveball Anders]

Almost created my own debris incident.

Was restocking on free Kerbonauts by attempting to rescue some left behind in Kerbin orbit by less diligent Space Agencies.

All went well, lifter separated just before circularisation (auto delete) but once in the designated orbit as was planning for rendezvous I had quite a bit of fuel left in my transfer stage so I decided to keep that to save the fuel in the actual rescue vessel since I planned on picking up 3 new recruits in one mission.

It manoeuvred a bit sluggish with that lump attached but all went well and I'd calculated that the extra stage would run out of fuel before I reached the first of my target.

On final approach, moving towards the first target at 100 m/s, rocket end first, set perfectly to hit the brakes and park right outside the stricken craft.

That the extra stage ran out of fuel early in the brake burn (as calculated). No problem, hit space, separate the junk and fire up the 'proper' engine.

Only to see the newly created 'debris' hurl dead straight towards the target at 50-60 m/s ...

It missed by mere meters ....

 

[Mister Dilsby]

Run into space debris? No. Run into debris of crashed ships scattered around the runway? Ehhh...

[Andem]

Yes, actually. My first space station got rammed by the stage that put the first module into orbit, was quite a light show. then I F9d and it didn't hit the station that time. The real "Kessler Syndrome" in KSP is the lag from loading in all of the debris.

[Spaceception]

No, because I delete all debris after a mission from the tracking station.

[regex]

I've come close to an R-7 core that ended up in LEO during an RP-0 playthrough, within 2km or so, but I didn't get anywhere near hitting it.  I've been much closer to stuff in stock KSP but have never hit anything, even on long-term saves with many launches.  I don't care about debris.

[Corona688]

4 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Run into space debris? No. Run into debris of crashed ships scattered around the runway? Ehhh...

Friend of mine earned the nickname 'Captain Kessler' by launching so many spectacularly failing rockets, one after the other, without reverting, that he'd routinely hit the midair debris from his last launch.  Again, not space junk, just debris >20km which hasn't had time to crash yet.

[TimePeriod]

Within 120m of my active spacecraft.

Well within safety margins.

[ProtoJeb21]

I've never hit any debris by accident. However, some of my saves have gotten crowded enough for some close passes within 5 km. That's inside my safe zone. You don't know if a piece of debris is actually a Kraken Asteroid over 5 km wide!  

[Wallygator]

Yes.

But from same craft following a form of decoupling.

 

Edited July 14, 2016 by Wallygator

[Fearless Son]

I have never hit any space debris (that was not the result of an immediately prior jettison from the same vehicle that got hit) but my experience was heavily influenced by Planetes, so I try to avoid generating an excessive amount of it and removing what significant debris I do put up there.

 

[Wraith977]

Technically, yes. Although it was more like a failed attempt at ramming and was by no means unintentional. Otherwise I've never directly collided with any other space debris. I do have a bad habit of decoupling stages just a bit too early though, almost always leading to a plethora of SRBs chewing up the rest of the rocket in an instant...

[something]

Never really hit anything, although I do not remove the waste - i.e. I try to leave the waste in unstable orbits but if that doesn't happen so be it. My space station has a slight inclination of aroind 1deg so the chances for collisions with waste on highly elliptical orbits is just close to zero...

 

[Rath]

Back when I played with mechjeb, anything I had was always a 200km.  It got bad.  I had like 50 rockets explode and scatter debris everywhere.  Both prograde and retrograde.  back in .90 I had a chunk of a double orange mainsail booster take out nothing but the core of my semitrical station and a hab with a one random fin on the side.  it was only like 100m/s though.

[magnemoe]

On 12.7.2016 at 9:51 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

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.

Running into stuff you dropped is not uncommon, especially with mechjeb, the landing autopilot is most dangerous as it give no time to burn. 
Running into stuff you have neither docked or try to reach is rare. 
My favorite was hitting an asteroid with an asteroid mover probe at 200 m/s, used mechjeb to set closest distance to target many time and did not get it down to 200 meter, however I was a bit to close. 

[Bev7787]

I was approaching my station, missed the launcher that carried it there by a few metres. Another time, I was attempting to rendezvous with a departure stage, ended up rendezvousing with its lifter instead. My main save also has minor Kessler syndrome in my 80x80km standard orbit.

[Kyrt Malthorn]

Well...  technically yes? I was decommissioning my first ever space station, and was just undocking the last ship to take elsewhere, and was in map mode so didn't realize my deorbit burn was pointed through the middle of said decommissioned station / oversize space debris.  It was a learning experience.  And messy, explody, etc.

[CaelumEtAstra]

Not yet, but I almost hit some interstage panels (the ones from Procedural Fairings) from the LV I launched on. I managed to get clear of them by moving to a higher orbit.

So far, my save is pretty clean in terms of debris. Most of my upper stages can deorbit from LKO or are shot out to a heliocentric orbit, but ones on a KTO trajectory cannot due to a self imposed boiloff limit.

[Rune]

I actually got it to happen legit! I just didn't notice and got the scare of a lifetime. It was a looong time ago (partly because since then I keep my debris controlled, partly because of the stupidly low probabilities), but I remember that while building a multi-piece space station, one of the discarded tug stages collided with my station hard enough to screw it completely. I actually loaded thinking it was a bug, and then discovered that I did indeed have a stage on a crossing orbit that whizzed by the screen. That's where that decoupler that I found in the original debris field came from! (I suspected bugs the first time around). Sadly, by then, the thing had been handled on rails and I only had the memory of the "what" moment in the original instance. I quietly move the station to a slightly different orbit, and treasured the memory ever since.

 

Rune. I guess one-in-a-billion chances happen all the time... we just aren't looking!

[SorryDave]

It happened to me once. The relative speed was slow, and my reflexes slower. 

I've hit ejected debris a few times, the impact would not destroy my craft, just change it orientation enough that atmospheric heating would.

[Cunjo Carl]

I actually did hit space debris once. While in LKO waiting for a transfer, I decoupled a couple enormous radial tanks which happened to be due North/South. They quickly drifted away out of sight, and out of mind. I orbited once at 50x time warp to fill up on solar power and sure enough, here come those orbital tanks careening back in from the north and south. PANIC!!! I ineptly slapped some keys but didn't even manage to fully leave time warp. That was a blessing, in fact.

The tanks phased straight through my ship, out the other side and along their merry way. That's when I learned your ship is immune to collisions when on rails. Makes sense in retrospect.

It's not quite the same as hitting debris from an earlier launch, but if you can imagine my look of instant surprise, realization and horror, the story should still be worth it. Cheers!

[Death Engineering]

Closest ever that wasn't on purpose was doing aerocapture around Duna. I had lined up the lander trajectory with the awaiting crew already in orbit while just inside Duna SOI. As it approached Duna's atmosphere, the game stuttered. It took a moment to realize it was from loading the other ship at the 2.2km point!

Nothing to do but watch as we passed the crew within only 177m. With the difference in velocities, it was only a few frames. From interplanetary, that's about as close as I could come even if I'd tried.

Edit: found the screenie! 

Not quite at the closest point but closing fast!

 

Edited July 25, 2016 by Death Engineering
POIDH

[NSEP]

I probably have. My space station once starting spinning really fast for some reason. Im not 100% shure if it is space debris. But many legends say it was the kraken.

[generalmiller]

The only time I did worth mentioning was a long time ago when the game was still in Early Access and was I think about a year or two away from official release. I was playing a modded game most importantly FASA, Raster Prop Monitor and a life support mod though I can't remember which one. I was recreating the Apollo Missions and doing about 1 a week with no time warp and only usuing the interior and orbit camera modes, never usuing the exterior just for fun. On the flights especially the Apollo 8, 10, 11, and 12 flights on the long trip to the Mun I'd read a book play another game or something like that while the spacecraft slowly went on its way. And on the Apollo 13 flight I was doing the same thing. Since there's no random failures in the game I figured it'd be just like the other ones so I was kicked back reading a book and watching Netflix. I was a about half-way to the Mun and all of a sudden I hear this huge explosion which was clearly not from what I was watching on Netflix so I pause it and tab back in to KSP quickly. I look out the window of the capsule and everything is spinning like crazy. The RCS isn't working and FASA capsules don't have Reaction Wheels since they're supposed to be somewhat realistic. So I have to use one of the preset action groups to bring up the Munar Module(MM) RCS to regain control and I start clicking through every RPM screen trying to figure out what happened when I notice I'm light RCS fuel and on the next screen oh look the CSM engine is gone!.

I bring up the F3 menu to see what happened and see it say that debris from Apollo 8 collided with me. It turns out one of the fairings from the MM covering hit the Service Module while I was happily floating along. The sheer odds of that happening I can't begin to fathom, but it left me without an Engine, it took out an RCS fuel tank, and short on Supplies. So I did the math and realized I'd be short on oxygen unless I sped up. Fortunately I always do a free-return trajectory so after I passed from behind the Mun and was heading back to Kerbin I used the MM decent engine to speed up and make it to Kerbin before I ran out of Oxygen. I ended up using all the fuel in the Decent stage and most of the RCS that wasn't for reentry up making sure they'd get back in time. My Apollo 13 ended up being pretty close to the real one just by sheer bad luck, but it made for the most exciting trip to the Mun yet for me even if I didn't get to land on it.

 

tl:dr KSP made me recreate Apollo 13 even though I wasn't planning on it.

[Dfthu]

I seen debris get as close as about 1km away, but i see 5km more oftern.

[Kerbart]

Why yes! Although it wasn't debris before I hit it (usually an overly enthousiastic transfer burn forgetting that the space station you just decoupled from is still there, a few km away).

Lesson learned; after decoupling from a station I always burn retrograde to change altitude with a few km. That guarantees that you'll be ahead of said station when boosting your orbit, and out of the way when lowering it.