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

[dr_jt]

The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.

Edited June 5, 2013 by dr_jt

[Sapphire]

I always keep zero debris, no matter what. I make sure my stages drop to the ground, and if it's interplanetary, upon jettisoning a stage, I switch to it with [ ] and end the flight so it disappears.

[Epic DaVinci]

I always build de-orbiting parts into my craft, i find a few sets of Seperatrons work nicley (more if bigger). I put them on the very last stage to avoid accidental fireing. I dont care for large debris, so i like to get rid the proper way without deleting.

[llamatoes]

I deorbit small bits of junk, but of late, I've been building a station out of junk.

For that reason, all my boosters have docking facilities, probe bodies and rcs.

[Jokurr]

I used to because in 0.19 it became very hard to click on objects I had in an equatorial orbit around Kerbin, then I downloaded the haystack mod and didn’t bother anymore. Now that mod is redundant and I still don’t bother deorbiting since I can easily click on whatever vessel I’m looking for without having to click on debris in the same orbit 20 times.

[thestookem]

No, I just turned off persistent debris and forget about the booster stages.

[Francesco]

No, I just leave all of my debris on a suborbital trajectory when I decouple.

this.

from reading this thread, it seems that most players overlook the simplicity of such a course of action: decoupling ~50 m/s before circularization (on LKO), and letting the booster stage(s) re-enter spontaneously.

[Wayfare]

No, I just leave all of my debris on a suborbital trajectory when I decouple.

Agreed. I build my launchers so that they almost, but not quite, make it to orbit. Depending on the mission, I'll either bolt a final orbital assist stage on top of it, or use the payload's own propulsion to circularize to a stable orbit. No debris left in orbit makes me happy

[tek_604]

I use the Sunbeam mod and launch a SDI satellite if I have debris I want to get out of LKO, or Muna orbit. Once it had to shoot down a whole dead spacecraft (unmanned I must add), which had run out of batteries in Kerbin orbit (forgot to deploy the panels).

[leax256]

although it's not a booster I do have a refueling ship that sends 3000+ fuel into orbit. when I finish refueling I put ~50 fuel units in it point, retograde, burn, eva the kerbal and send him on his merry way to the station.

[Markus Reese]

95% of my debris is de-orbited in this way. But at the moment I am building a rather large interplanetary vessel to perform an Eve rescue. Unfortunately, when making rendevous with the main vessel, there always is the small drive engines that are used once in orbit and I don't want them along for the trip since they won't be used any more. Those are the specific components that I de-orbit. I should use sepatrons, but where is the fun in that

[Mercy]

I like debris. It's cool.

[Oggula]

Only my largest craft need to leave spent stages in Kerbin orbit on departure, and those orbits are always highly elliptic, so I don't see the point

[skykooler]

Now that the new docking ports and extra-large probe cores are here, I just stick one of those at the top of my circlarization stage, and make sure I have at least 8 units of fuel left to make a re-entry.

[katateochi]

I occasionally use probe cores to control my debris, but mostly I use remote tech instead. I like that it requires having a satellite network in place to be able to control debris. Also I've been playing since before probe cores, remote tech was one of the early options for debris control. I also try to design my craft to leave minimal debris in space.

[Rickenbacker]

Well, lately I've taken to putting BOTH a probe body, some batteries (very important!) AND a docking port on my booster stages. This way, I can suck the last bit of fuel out of it and into my station tanks, leaving just enough for the probe body to deorbit it. I should probably start putting parachutes on them as well, in anticipation of campaign mode...

[TheDarkStar]

I don't, since I leave everything in orbit.

[Merinsan]

I generally try to drop the final launch stage before the periapsis goes past 20km, but there are exceptions. I use probes/seperatrons/RCS to get junk out of orbit. The coolest method is seperatrons, slightly angled. Watching that thing fly away was fun.

[rryy]

On my upper stages, I put a remote guidance system so it can deorbit itself after it has delivered its payload.

[The Minmus Derp]

Normally I recover them.

[Zeiss Ikon]

Since my career reached the mid-160 tier, I've been deorbiting everything possible.  My current launcher core (Twin Boar with a 6400 tank on top, plus a 200 tank most of the time, and two to six boosters built from 3x800 1.25m tanks, a Reliant or, recently, a Skiff, and a Sepratron) is tailored to either run dry a hundred or so m/s short of orbit with the payloads I'm launching at present, or I shut it down at that velocity and separate it with a whisper of fuel left.  The 100+ m/s burn to finish LKO insertion doesn't detract significantly from the transfer stage's dV, and it avoids adding still more junk to the LKO/equatorial/80-85km orbit band.

I started this after I started seeing space debris on almost every launch, sometimes as close as a a dozen or so km.  With the Klaw now available, I'm also starting to deorbit junk on any mission that can spare the dV and doesn't absolutely require a docking port on the nose.

Edited April 15, 2018 by Zeiss Ikon

[Goody1981]

Voted in the poll, and was happily reading along in the thread when someone mentioned version 0.20...

Holy mother of necro! Haha!

[Geonovast]

Yes and no.  I try to, but don't always remember.  I also have the TAC self destruct mod, which is kind of handy, but don't always remember that either.  Lately I have been trying to spam sepratrons to push the spend stages retrograde enough for de-orbit.

[Vanamonde]

Complaining about necros is as much forum clutter as necroing, guys, especially when, as in this case, the discussion is still relevant so it's not actually necroing. 

I recover higher stages because they have more valuable parts and I use no mods to steer the lower stages in atmo while I pilot the rest of the ship. 

[DAL59]

Now, SpaceX is trying to recover an upper stage...