Buggy debris

[Loren Pechtel]

I have 4 pieces of debris "orbiting" Kerbin--periapsis is at 45km.

What's strange, though, is that they don't actually exist.  [x] Science! tells me what they are:  Crew: 0, Parts: 0, Mass: 0.0t No command pod.  My attempt to fly one to see what was really going on put me in atmosphere with no craft visible and the altitude meter not moving one iota (it's in a rather eccentric orbit!)

I suspect these are ghosts of radiators.  On my last flight I had a craft without good heat shielding, I flubbed a maneuver and ended up hitting atmosphere about 300 m/s faster than planned and with my Nerva stage still burning the last of it's fuel.  The radiators burned off when my orbit was something like what these ghost parts have, then I blew the Nerva stage when it was burning the last of it's fuel (so it would get well away from me, no chance of running into it on the way down.)  It was destroyed when it went out of range, all I can figure it somehow those burned-off radiators got left in limbo.

I also found 3 intact radiators and 1 broken radiator on a similar orbit.  While I have flown the rocket several times this is the only time I've entered with the apoapsis so high.

Known issue?  Is the save game any use for debugging?  (Note:  The actual radiators are already deleted before I got to these ghosts.)

 

[Duck McFuddle]

Can you "terminate" them in the tracking station? If not, I would just ignore them - I have tons of debris floating around but I don't bother cleaning up. If It really becomes an issue, then I terminate some of them. 

In the case that you can't terminate them for whatever reason and really want to get rid of them, then I guess you could do a rendezvous with a claw attached to your ship.

I have never heard of this bug before, but I'm not the kind of player to really care about what bugs there are... Somebody else can probably tell you if it's common.

[GRS]

Maximum...Persistent...Debris...

That better work, decrease it as low as you wish.