Do you use probe components to de-orbit large booster stages?

[Capt. Hunt]

I usually try to ditch the first stage prior to orbital insertion, even if it's got fuel left in it.  If I use an upper stage, and I'm going anywhere beyond LKO I try to do what apollo did, I aim for a collision course with the body I'm trying to get to, and then correct my trajectory after jettisoning the upper stage.  If it's worth while I'll put some chutes or a probe core and extra Delta-V on my first stage and/or boosters so they can be recovered.

[G'th]

Debris control is always a fun thing. What I typically do with any stage is just ditch it before orbital insertion. But for upper stages (and transfer stages in particular), what I like to do is switch to them and have them burn either to crash into the Mun or I turn them around, set their throttle to full and then switch back immediately to my payload. For the 2km load distance the engine will still fire in whatever direction it was pointed at and this is enough to guarantee either a deorbit or a clear push into Solar orbit.

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 hour ago, G'th said:

enough to guarantee either a deorbit or a clear push into Solar orbit.

Well, sure, but in another thousand years you'll have trouble getting from Kerbin to Duna without having to dodge sun-orbiting debris -- and getting rid of that stuff is way harder than clearing debris from LKO.

[G'th]

3 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Well, sure, but in another thousand years you'll have trouble getting from Kerbin to Duna without having to dodge sun-orbiting debris -- and getting rid of that stuff is way harder than clearing debris from LKO.

Yeah but in a thousand years we can just blow through the debris with our shield systems. 

[Gargamel]

Well, when the OP was written, I don't believe we had many if any mods for recovering stages, so planning your ascent vehicles to stage so you could recover the parts was a thing.   Now with certain mods, the stages will be automatically recovered for you, if the right preparations have been made.  

[KerikBalm]

If not SSTOing, then I can mostly just decouple just before the periapsis rises above the atmosphere. For going to a moon, I can have it impact the moon... if I really don't want to clutter my tracking station list and use the empty stage as a propellant depot.

For ejection stages, I tend to have a probe core on them so that they can decouple and retroburn, then aerobrake into low orbit for refueling for future use.

[suicidejunkie]

What goes to Space, stays in Space.  (except for early game return capsules, contracted ore drop-pods, and spaceplane shuttles)

The boosters don't get deorbited, because my payloads all push themselves the final bit into orbit, then head off to do things, refuel, and get reused until they are disassembled with KAS at the Minmus branch of Jeb's Junkyard and Spare Parts Emporium.

 

No probe cores are needed for re-entry, since the chutes are pre-armed at the time of separation.

[Tyko]

On 6/4/2013 at 11:49 PM, AndreyATGB said:

I don't, because my lifters mostly need another ~100 dV to circularize so they just fall down since my ship finishes the circularization with its own engines. The only time I leave debris is a mid-transfer burn for example. If I use up all my additional docked fuel tanks, I just dump them. They usually remain in solar orbit or an extremely elliptical Kerbin orbit.

This is my approach too..I have my final launch stage cut off before circularization when the PE is still in the atmosphere. The actual orbital stage completes circularization and I've gotten that down to about 30-50m/s.

The game still leaves suborbital parts in orbit unless the PE is below 25Km, so I go in and remove anything that has a PE in the atmosphere so should be removed.

[FinalFan]

New player, stock game.  I've been addicted to recovering booster stages ever since they started lasting to orbit.  I'm bad at it, but I don't take a loss on the probes and parachutes and it keeps my system clean.  I'm not sure how much this effort impacts my delta-v, but I'm sure it's less than everything else I'm doing wrong. 

[suicidejunkie]

You can also switch to the debris, and watch it aerobrake down below the PE cutoff.  If it is a constellation of debris, they they'll all be in physics range and pretty nifty.

Leave to the space center despite the warning any time you like, since it doesn't matter.

[roboslacker]

I don't deorbit my debris, I just let it pile up in LKO.

[Curveball Anders]

I design my launchers to burn out a shade before pe hitting 70, just at the final push of circularisation.

Anything that goes into orbit can either deorbit by themself, or has a docking port so a tug can do it (claw is for asteroids)

 

[Goody1981]

5 hours ago, roboslacker said:

I don't deorbit my debris, I just let it pile up in LKO.

I do this too, and if you have Distant Object Enhancement it makes it so much better. Yesterday I was testing an SSTO, didn’t make it to orbit (standard) but came down and landed on the other side of the planet, in the middle of the night. I looked up to admire the starry view, and there were dozens of little ‘stars’ zipping all over the place. Looks exactly like when you see a satellite, or the ISS, in real life. You can mouse over them and it tells you what they are too... a lot of mine were debris haha.

DOE is awesome

[MR L A]

I plan my launches so that all stages (except the payload obviously) are sub-orbital or outside of Kerbal's SOI... even then, stages going to another planet can be on a collision trajectory if that stage doesn't have enough dV to circularise or whatever I'm doing.

I don't like debris floating about, but I don't delete it for realism's sake.

[Jimmidii]

My orbital insertion stage usually has a tiny bit of fuel left over after pushing the payload into orbit.

I have four of the smallest radial engines attached upside down near the top of the stage, and a couple of sepratrons upside down and angled to give rotational stability.

Once I get into orbit I disable the main engine, enable the four retrograde engines, line myself up prograde, hit full throttle, and stage the separation and the sepratrons.

Deorbits the stage, doesn't need to be controlled, and I don't need to spend any fuel from the upper stage to finish the orbit.

[Superfluous J]

I deorbit but don't recover my debris. I almost never have a probe on it, I just make sure it's on a destructive (or system-exiting) trajectory when I decouple it.

If money mattered more than it does I'd care more, but I'd also play (even) less because I want to fly spaceships not balance ledgers.

[KeranoKerman]

I don't de-orbit my parts because they are on pretty similar orbits but I may have to soon because several missions krakened while in orbit along with several re-usable booster crashes (The irony is insane) that broke the connecter parts so there are masses of lander legs and engines. A few of my missions (Even one with few radial parts) got krakened, ruining a very powerful antenna sat in orbit round the sun and destroying a nearly out of fuel rescue mission which had a bad antenna and couldn't use maneuver nodes. Another one was a Minmus Lab mission that got krakened, separating the lab and cockpit. (It had no horizontal parts except inside a Making History Expansion Service Module) The two kerbals in the lab first setup with the capsule, and got in. After realizing that they would crash into minmus, one valiant kerbal went on EVA and used his jetpack to boost their periapsis above minmus's surface.