Is KSP kessler syndrome possible?

[Flixxbeatz]

Well if you managed to cram up 100 or more pieces of debris and spacecrafts inside the 2.3km then you can simulate one.

[pizzaoverhead]

In fact, if you are docking two space craft together and you time warp, you can fly right through the craft.

Even better, I've actually had a Minmus impactor go straight through the moon by being on too high a timewarp.

Aside from the short physics range, the problem with kessler syndrome in KSP is that parts get deleted without producing fragments when they explode. I'm trying to write a plugin to create shrapnel debris when something explodes, but I haven't figured out how to create single-part debris during flight yet.

I've seen objects in an 'orbit' dip into the atmosphere of Kerbin at altitudes of like 20KM and somehow just keep going and back out into space unless I load into them directly.

KSP doesn't simulate drag for on-rails craft, so they chose an altitude below which a craft would always reenter no matter what speed it was doing. If it is below that altitude, it gets deleted. If it is above it, it experiences no forces. I think the altitude is around 22km.

[NeoMorph]

I've had a polar orbit piece of debris hit my equatorial orbit lander and orbiter setup. Knocked a leg off my lander and spun the thing like crazy and the service module fell off. Thought I would need to put up a rescue mission but nope. It was my own version of Apollo 13 in the end because the lander was stable enough to bring the team home. Kind of awesome when things like that happen.

[Alfondoo]

You'd find it really difficult to hit something at a decent velocity if you were aiming for it.

The closest I've come to orbital collision was when I was going of for a rendezvous and while finishing up my orbit the craft I was aiming for came flying up behind me at some silly 600m/s. Had to quickly move over to let it past (big station). Best rendezvous I've managed as I matched my velocity 2km away from target!

[Kilmeister]

I had a high speed impact in orbit over Mojo. My original mission did not have enough fuel to return to Kerbin, so I packed a flying gas tank and flew it there. Mechjeb was apparently TOO accurate and the intercept burn put me directly into the vehicles I had planned on saving. Fortunately I only clipped it and knocked off a few empty fuel tanks and an engine that wasn't going to be used anyways as I tumbled away for a few hundred meters... Would've been embarrassing to have to send a rescue mission to save the rescue mission.

Closest I've come to a completely random encounter was only 300 or so meters as an old spent booster zipped by me while I was waiting to do a circulizing burn.

[ls612]

I know that in KSP once you are beyond 70 km your orbit will never decay, but IRL doesn't every orbit under 500 mi or so slowly decay into the atmosphere? I know that the ISS needs to spend fuel to maintain it's orbit at ~300 miles. So wouldn't space debris decay and reenter over the course of a few years (at least in LEO) without stabilization? Or am I missing something here?

[pizzaoverhead]

In LEO, orbital decay takes on the order of months. At higher altitude orbits, this time rises rapidly, through to thousands of years at higher orbits. Kessler syndrome is where debris from a collision produces debris from other collisions so rapidly (hours) that everything is affected. Collisions can send debris into highly eccentric orbits where it can cause further collisions, meaning anywhere from decades to hundreds of years of danger in a worst-case scenario.

[Fel]

More of a performance thing though because KSP doesn't allow non-controlled objects to have decaying orbits. Either an object is in a stable orbit or it's on a suborbital path. I've seen objects in an 'orbit' dip into the atmosphere of Kerbin at altitudes of like 20KM and somehow just keep going and back out into space unless I load into them directly.

KSP doesn't simulate drag for on-rails craft, so they chose an altitude below which a craft would always reenter no matter what speed it was doing. If it is below that altitude, it gets deleted. If it is above it, it experiences no forces. I think the altitude is around 22km.

But I find it strange that it doesn't auto delete the craft; 20Km is insanely low in the atmosphere, enough so that it would either be destroyed by re-entry or would slow down enough to crash into the surface. I know KSP will auto-delete crafts that don't have a full orbit, while in the atmosphere; so why not crafts that have an unrealistically low orbit?

[lazarus1024]

Kessler Syndrome is a bit of a lie, you just need to have stronger skin on what goes up. And then stronger skin on the next stuff that goes up, and so on.

Technology will certainly progress fast enough that we can effectively ignore the effect.

i hope you are joking. You can't build a rocket/ship/satellite with a hull of a realistic thickness to protect it from a 1oz piece of debris moving at 5km second. Not unless you are launching M1A1 tanks in to space...which is a bit cost/technology prohibitive.

[AustralianFries]

i started a suborbital burn the other day like 40s before something going retrograde flew through where i'd been.

Missed me by less than 1200m.

Was pretty crazy, especially as it was on an elliptic orbit..

Well, you kind of cut off the other part of my post. I meant that as "I've never had anything collide with me in orbit before that instance."

But yeah anything closer than 2 kilometers is rather scary.

[kahlzun]

not unless you are launching m1a1 tanks in to space...which is a bit cost/technology prohibitive.

someone mod this immediatly

[Tiron]

I know that in KSP once you are beyond 70 km your orbit will never decay, but IRL doesn't every orbit under 500 mi or so slowly decay into the atmosphere? I know that the ISS needs to spend fuel to maintain it's orbit at ~300 miles. So wouldn't space debris decay and reenter over the course of a few years (at least in LEO) without stabilization? Or am I missing something here?

Everything in KSP is compressed. Kerbin has Earth level gravity and atmosphere but only about 1/10th of our size. Earth's atmosphere extends much higher than Kerbin's, and never really 'ends', it just tapers off. The atmospheric density at a given altitude varies as well, mostly from variations in solar activity. Just such a change is part of why Skylab came down before we got the shuttles operational: Higher than expected solar activity extended the atmosphere and brought it down much faster than expected. The shuttle getting delayed didn't help either.

In KSP we don't consider a craft 'in orbit' until it's out of the atmosphere, but most real world orbital operations are conducted in the very thin atmospheric edge. Part of this is because you can't go on rails while in atmo. Real world orbits decay because there's still drag at those altitudes. In KSP there's not, so without interaction an orbit will NEVER decay.

That said, the real insidious part of Kessler Syndrome isn't possible in KSP at the moment. When a part is destroyed, it produces no debris. The only debris that can be produced in a collision then is surviving parts.

Solar panels DO produce bits of debris when destroyed, but they're not tracked. They despawn very quickly and never get a chance to be a problem. Engine fairings follow the same behavior.

[almondj]

Kessler Syndrome is a bit of a lie, you just need to have stronger skin on what goes up. And then stronger skin on the next stuff that goes up, and so on.

Technology will certainly progress fast enough that we can effectively ignore the effect.

This is a joke, right?

[Tiron]

This is a joke, right?

I'm honestly not sure if he's joking or just doesn't understand how much energy we're talking about. You'd at least think he'd understand the whole 'extra weight = LOT of extra fuel and complexity' thing...

[pizzaoverhead]

But I find it strange that it doesn't auto delete the craft; 20Km is insanely low in the atmosphere, enough so that it would either be destroyed by re-entry or would slow down enough to crash into the surface. I know KSP will auto-delete crafts that don't have a full orbit, while in the atmosphere; so why not crafts that have an unrealistically low orbit?

Because it is possible to have an unpowered, well-shielded craft aerobrake at 25km and continue on its path if it's going fast enough. Below their chosen altitude, this is impossible. If you're going to pick a cutoff point to magically delete craft, that would be it. Otherwise you're deleting craft with a periapsis of 65km.