Help! My space station got torn apart by a bunch of junk!

[WarpPrime]

A few months ago, I launched an unmanned space station core into low Kerbin orbit. However, the upper stage malfunctioned during orbit circularization and blew apart the entire stack, sending ~100 fragments of debris into orbit. I did not care the slightest bit about it, as they are going to cause no harm.

Just recently, I began constructing a massive space station. After 5 successful launches, the station was half-complete. However, on the sixth launch, debris from the old space station hit my 6th module, it too turning into several large chunks of junk. Then, moments later, the ~150 frag trail slammed into the space station, completely annihilating it. Luckily, all of the 8 kerbals aboard the station were unharmed, and escaped safely (they are now in the Astronaut Complex casually eating snacks).

Now there are over 400 pieces of debris (1000 if you count the solar panels) orbiting in a wide strip around Kerbin. It already covers about 1% of Kerbin's surface area. Help!

[Vanamonde]

You have four options. 1) Start a new save. 2) Make a debris collection ship and start de-orbiting those things. 3) Just keep going because despite what happened that is seriously bad luck and unlikely to happen again. 4) Go to the settings and turn debris max down to zero, which will eliminate all existing bits of space junk. 

Good luck.

[WarpPrime]

59 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

You have four options. 1) Start a new save. 2) Make a debris collection ship and start de-orbiting those things. 3) Just keep going because despite what happened that is seriously bad luck and unlikely to happen again. 4) Go to the settings and turn debris max down to zero, which will eliminate all existing bits of space junk. 

Good luck.

So 1) In real life, we can't "destroy the universe and make a new one". 3) Yeah, fat chance xD 4) Pretty much the same as 2) but we cheat a lot. So what's left is 2.

How am I supposed to create a debris collection ship that is resistant to ~3-6 km/s impacts??? Or do I just have to launch a bunch of these things into, say, keostationary orbit, and drop them one by one to collect ~50 junk pieces and deorbit them? Probably the latter.

[paul_c]

Upper stage malfunction?

[WarpPrime]

1 minute ago, paul_c said:

Upper stage malfunction?

Yep... Don't you hate it when your fellow engineer forgets to weld in a single strut?

[paul_c]

Yes......

If the debris field isn't too wide, you could launch space station #2 on a slightly different inclination/altitude. Or a completely different one?

[Guest]

On 3/12/2021 at 2:37 PM, WarpPrime said:

A few months ago, I launched an unmanned space station core into low Kerbin orbit. However, the upper stage malfunctioned during orbit circularization and blew apart the entire stack, sending ~100 fragments of debris into orbit. I did not care the slightest bit about it, as they are going to cause no harm.

Just recently, I began constructing a massive space station. After 5 successful launches, the station was half-complete. However, on the sixth launch, debris from the old space station hit my 6th module, it too turning into several large chunks of junk. Then, moments later, the ~150 frag trail slammed into the space station, completely annihilating it. Luckily, all of the 8 kerbals aboard the station were unharmed, and escaped safely (they are now in the Astronaut Complex casually eating snacks).

Now there are over 400 pieces of debris (1000 if you count the solar panels) orbiting in a wide strip around Kerbin. It already covers about 1% of Kerbin's surface area. Help!

(Deleted Post)

Edited June 8, 2022 by Guest

[WarpPrime]

53 minutes ago, SpaceX_Boi said:

Omg  

R.I.P.

Try launching your new station into a higher/lower orbit, if that works  

P.S. cool profile pict  

Yes, thanks what I am doing right now. 2 modules are already in place at 150 km instead of 100 km. But oftentimes, when launching SSTOs, etc. 80-100 km is a good parking orbit for them before departing to a destination. Any ideas on how to scoop up large amounts of debris and dispose of them safely (without cheating, this is realism!!!)?

P.S. Thanks for the complement

Edited March 13, 2021 by WarpPrime
PS

[KerbMav]

12 hours ago, WarpPrime said:

Any ideas on how to scoop up large amounts of debris and dispose of them safely (without cheating, this is realism!!!)

As long as you launch the cleanup ship into a similar orbit s the debris cloud the relative speed and potential impact force will not be that high.

 Thanks to the new Kerbal construction mode in space you don’t even have to bring x amount of claws, just get close and rendezvous - maybe claw to limit drift - and take the debris apart to build some weird ball of trash trailing behind your cleaner. But it with several gimbling engines attached laterally to retain as much maneuverability as possible as the ball grows, deorbit a chunk if it becomes too unwieldy.

 Any fuel you encounter extends your mission time! And since it’s just orbital you can do very fuel efficient.

Also: activate windows’ gaming center to have the option to save the last minute of gameplay - would have liked to see that collision... 

 

[WarpPrime]

5 hours ago, KerbMav said:

As long as you launch the cleanup ship into a similar orbit s the debris cloud the relative speed and potential impact force will not be that high.

 Thanks to the new Kerbal construction mode in space you don’t even have to bring x amount of claws, just get close and rendezvous - maybe claw to limit drift - and take the debris apart to build some weird ball of trash trailing behind your cleaner. But it with several gimbling engines attached laterally to retain as much maneuverability as possible as the ball grows, deorbit a chunk if it becomes too unwieldy.

 Any fuel you encounter extends your mission time! And since it’s just orbital you can do very fuel efficient.

Also: activate windows’ gaming center to have the option to save the last minute of gameplay - would have liked to see that collision... 

 

Yep, started to do that, but I may have a fuel shortage as most of the debris are just structural parts. I was lucky enough to find a few FL-T100 and a X200-8 tank that might help  

Sadly, my Game Bar broke a few months ago  Any alternatives you recommend?

[SpaceFace545]

@WarpPrime So there is a cheaty way you can do it. Just go into the tracking station and terminate the debris. They disapear.

[WarpPrime]

8 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

@WarpPrime So there is a cheaty way you can do it. Just go into the tracking station and terminate the debris. They disapear.

@SpaceFace545 Yes, that is a very obvious and simple way to go about it. But in real life, its not realistic to say, "Ok, theres a bunch of junk in low Earth orbit. Let's just say these things don't exist." Then the debris just disappears. See my post reply here, or just do some minor scrolling.

[SpaceFace545]

Just now, WarpPrime said:

@SpaceFace545 Yes, that is a very obvious and simple way to go about it. But in real life, its not realistic to say, "Ok, theres a bunch of junk in low Earth orbit. Let's just say these things don't exist." Then the debris just disappears. See my post reply here, or just do some minor scrolling.

yeah I know its not realistic but if your going full realism then we would just evacuate those obits and just use higher orbits

[WarpPrime]

Just now, SpaceFace545 said:

yeah I know its not realistic but if your going full realism then we would just evacuate those obits and just use higher orbits

@SpaceFace545Yes, that is definitely possible. But now we can't have parking orbits, and that means we have to make more expensive SSTOs and spend more delta-v on avoiding junk. Someone mentioned that before; my response was right below. Do you have any crafts that may help orbiting debris collection/destruction?

 

[SpaceFace545]

2 minutes ago, WarpPrime said:

@SpaceFace545Yes, that is definitely possible. But now we can't have parking orbits, and that means we have to make more expensive SSTOs and spend more delta-v on avoiding junk. Someone mentioned that before; my response was right below. Do you have any crafts that may help orbiting debris collection/destruction?

 

I play JNSQ with BDB so all of my upper stages have avionics to deorbit. I do use a Delta K stage with a grappler to deorbit bigger stuff but not much. What height is  your debris field and inclination

[WarpPrime]

Just now, SpaceFace545 said:

I play JNSQ with BDB so all of my upper stages have avionics to deorbit. I do use a Delta K stage with a grappler to deorbit bigger stuff but not much. What height is  your debris field and inclination

@SpaceFace545My debris field height is 100 ± 2 km and its inclination is 0 ± 1° relative to the equator. I'm planning on sending a Jumbo-64 with some crew and a bunch of claws to grab the stuff. Probably I'm gonna bring a lot of spare fuel tanks, struts, fuel ducts, and light engines to deorbit junk.

Mission plan:

Launch a crewed mission into LKO to salvage debris. Some debris will be recovered (i.e. fuel tanks), others will be compressed into a massive ball of junk by Kerbals, then deorbited.

[Misguided Kerbal]

You could, of course, just leave the debris in orbit. I purposefully didn't clean up debris in my save because I wanted 'realism'. I do get some collisions (very rarely), but other than that I don't get any problems. And if you have Distant Object Enhancement, it is good for immersion.

[SpaceFace545]

1 minute ago, WarpPrime said:

@SpaceFace545My debris field height is 100 ± 2 km and its inclination is 0 ± 1° relative to the equator. I'm planning on sending a Jumbo-64 with some crew and a bunch of claws to grab the stuff. Probably I'm gonna bring a lot of spare fuel tanks, struts, fuel ducts, and light engines to deorbit junk.

Mission plan:

Launch a crewed mission into LKO to salvage debris. Some debris will be recovered (i.e. fuel tanks), others will be compressed into a massive ball of junk by Kerbals, then deorbited.

so if you have about 400 pieces of debris this will take a very long time to cleanup. like a lot of time

[WarpPrime]

Just now, SpaceFace545 said:

so if you have about 400 pieces of debris this will take a very long time to cleanup. like a lot of time

Most of the debris are in proximity to each other, so the less I procrastinate, the easier the clean up will be.

[GuessingEveryDay]

Bucket. Are they all slow relative to each other? If yes, then you can do something like a bucket, catch multiple, then deorbit multiple at the same time!

[SpaceFace545]

Just now, WarpPrime said:

Most of the debris are in proximity to each other, so the less I procrastinate, the easier the clean up will be.

Im also dubious that you can create a ball of junk. and if it takes about 10 minutes to attach each piece of junk this will take around 70 hours straight docking. If I was you I would leave the debris or create a new save and copy your craft over.

[WarpPrime]

11 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Im also dubious that you can create a ball of junk. and if it takes about 10 minutes to attach each piece of junk this will take around 70 hours straight docking. If I was you I would leave the debris or create a new save and copy your craft over.

I am not planning on grabbing/docking with every single piece that is at large. I will use the built-in Kerbal Construction to make a trash ball. Then the ball will be deorbited, hopefully creating a good meteor show for the Kerbals at the KSC...

[SpaceFace545]

Just now, WarpPrime said:

I am not planning on grabbing/docking with every single piece that is at large. I will use the built-in Kerbal Construction to make a trash ball. Then the ball will be deorbited, hopefully creating a good meteor show for the Kerbals at the KSC...

okay but keep in mind that this will take a veerryy long time

[KerbMav]

Last suggestion: live with it and assume that there is a realistic amount of thin atmosphere up there that will eventually deorbit stuff over a bit ingame time? And then delete them?

[Wizard Kerbal]

I had that happen to one of my satellites, although the culprit was the kraken. It shook my satellite apart, flinging debris away. Luckily, they were also flung from their geostationary positions. I can’t do anything about it but reload a quicksave.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Wizard Kerbal