do you delete your debris?

[Tw1]

I don't delete them. I obliterate them with whack-a-kerbal, or fry them with lasers.

Most of this is from testing around the space centre or landing planes.

I try not to leave debris in orbit, but I'm not always successful.

Edited July 16, 2013 by Tw1

[Flixxbeatz]

...and if a piece had a probe core on it for extra torque (or temporary persistence), it gets ended from the tracking station.

Could be controlled and de-orbited. Unless if it runs out of Electricity and/or fuel in orbit...

[rryy]

I like to deorbit the orbital stages to reduce debris, but I don't mind some debris in orbit. I would only delete debris if it gets too laggy.

[Delling]

I delete around the spaceport, there is to much of a risk of lag/crash (as in program crash) when launching behemoths otherwise. In LKO I always aim for Kessler syndrome, insanely nerve-wreckingly fun to have something pass you at under 1 km distance in space.

[espm400]

I design my orbital vehicles to leave as little as possible in orbit, although some is unavoidable. As for around the space centre, I have an F-15/ACTIVE replica I made armed with Romfarer's Lazor Guided Missiles that frankly, I need as little of an excuse as possible to bring out of the hanger (I love flying that thing).

[Torham234]

I design my staging so that all I leave no (or minimal) orbiting debris. Around kerbin, I make sure all of it is on suborbital trajectory. If its something like another planet, or moons, I decouple when the craft is on impacting trajectory and correct afterwards. There are still some instances where it is much more efficient to leave some orbiting debris, but I try to keep it to minimum. The point is moot at this time though, since I start a fresh save for every new released version.

[Spyritdragon]

I try to leave minimal debris in orbit, but if something happens to stay in orbit, i don't fret too much about it. I plan most of my stages to decouple on either suborbital trajectories, impact trajectories or orbits that go into an atmosphere. The ones that don't have probe cores on them, so i can turn them around and use a little bit of fuel i leave in to put them on an impact trajectory, or put their orbit into atmosphere. I regularly accidentally orbit a piece of junk that was meant to pass through the atmosphere, and i have a nuclear KAS tug to pull those down when i feel like it. I have a few pieces in higher, elliptical Kerbin orbits which i can't be bothered to deorbit yet because they take more delta-V and time to deorbit. I also haven't gotten one of my nuclear tugs to the moon yet to deorbit debris from my early missions - the way i use it, i return to my station every now and then to refuel, so that's not going to be as easy with the Mun. My most recent Mun missions tend to have landers that can make the transfer themselves without anymore staging though.

Ill probably delete some of the orbital debris once i spend alot more time on this game and can't be bothered to fly my tug over anymore, or when it's in a far Kerbol orbit where i'll never ever run into it again and it just serves to clog my orbit map.

[0jam3290]

In my current save I don't (unless its around KSC area and causes lag on launches), but in the past I've deleted all my debris in order to prevent lag (looking at my current save, that was unnecessary).

[Lanfranc]

Inspired by the Planetes series, I've been working on designing a space tug to fly around in the Kerbin orbits, capture large pieces of debris, and either deorbit them or haul them back to my refuelling station to salvage any fuel they have left.

The development process has been… "challenging" (six Kerbals dead so far), but we're getting there.

[Tindahbawx]

Retro rocket most of it, however if it stays in orbit because I didnt apply enough force, it stays there until the cleanup ship arrives. Anything that crashes to the surface and survives gets deleted, I'm just going to assume the Kerbals find it lying about one day and lug it back to the space centre after giving it a quick polish.

[Akinesis]

I only delete debris when testing new designs. Otherwise it stays there (although, I just lost a lot due to deleting some mods).

However, I have a reduced-clutter program running where stages that could end up in orbit de-orbit themselves

[el_coyoto]

I usually put probe cores and RTG on all the stages that could end up in orbit and I keep some fuel left to de-orbit them.

Right now, I'm having fun with Mission Controller and the NT Space Program package. This mod lets recycle your crafts if you land them on Kerbin, thus allowing you to recover some of the cost.

This means that I am even more careful with debris, as I try to recover them as much as I can. It also means that I sometimes try to avoid injection stages and use the 1st stage of a very 'asparagus-sy' rocket (3 pairs of liquid boosters) for that, which avoids dumping the 1st stage onto Kerbin and lose money (powerful engines are expensive).

For example, when sending a mission sat around the mun, I send the 1st stage/injection stage on a free return trajectory to the Mun, decouple the sat before entering the Mun SoI, circularize its orbit around the Mun, and then return the 1st stage on Kerbin with a tiny burst to aerobrake it right onto KSC.

There are exceptions to my "no debris" policy though : some missions of the NT Space Program have a historical aspect (Moho and Duna flybys for example, that mirror the Mariner flybys) and I don't try to recover the injection stage because it would be too expensive or complicated. These debris have some kind of historical value, just like the real ones...

[Sma]

I sometimes try to put docking ports on what I know will be debris. That way I can take a "trash collector" to dock with and deobit. Though most of the time I can't be bothered to do that so spent stages stay in orbit. I've built a trash collector in the past with both a docking port (that i hoped would fit in the engine bells) with landing legs around it. The idea was for spent stages with out docking ports I could go up and grab them by the engine bell, and push them into deobit, but most of the time the landing legs (medium size ones) would pop off after closing. It did work a few times though. On the ground though I usually delete debris as it gets too laggy.

Recently when building a fuel station in Munar orbit I put the skipper engine on a sr docking port connected to some fuel tanks. I had a kethane miner on the other end of the tank, burned retrograde enough to get a slight impact with the surface, then got back into orbit after releasing the engine. THen used the free sr docking port to dock an exact copy of the tanks with another kethane miner. Along those lines I've had the thought to grab almost spent fuel stages and empty what little they have left into a fuel station then deorbit them, but so far that hasn't happend lol.

[Comrade Jenkens]

I delete debris either if its orbit takes it through atmosphere or if its within 2.5km of the KSC. Everything else I leave

[Ferrit]

If it's in orbit, it stays in orbit. Usually try to have discarded stages at least in a decaying orbit but errors happen. For that I've got a simple probe-based space tugs that can tow junk in to a decaying orbit and burn up with it.

For stuff that either survives re-entry (Deadly Re-Entry and FAR used) or just crashed before getting much altitude (space plane experiments mostly) I delete them from the Tracking Station, representing the Kerbals tidying up. Previously used the Lazer mod to vaporise 'litter' around the KSC but it doesn't seem to play nice with the other mods I use (quite a few) so tracking station it is.

I'm not even happy about crashing stuff on other planets/moons. Seem to have this 'must keep everything pristine' thing going on, even avoiding nuclear engines for landing (though fine for travelling) under the assumption that it'll screw with scientific readings and the like.

[Skorpychan]

Right now, we're heading for a save-breaking update, so why bother? It's all going to be wiped anyway. No need to worry.

When I settle in for the long haul, I'm going to leave it up there until I can figure out a legitimate means of removing it; no aborting it from the space center, no messing with settings to magically remove it. I also don't like leaving fuel anywhere, so it's all empty tanks anyway.

Maybe some sort of tug for knocking it out of orbit, or something that captures it all in a box and de-orbits itself.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to harvest it for resources.

[Rickenbacker]

I design my staging so that all I leave no (or minimal) orbiting debris. Around kerbin, I make sure all of it is on suborbital trajectory. If its something like another planet, or moons, I decouple when the craft is on impacting trajectory and correct afterwards. There are still some instances where it is much more efficient to leave some orbiting debris, but I try to keep it to minimum. The point is moot at this time though, since I start a fresh save for every new released version.

I do the same. My mail lifter drops all its boosters before reaching orbit, and the last stage before the payload has a probe body, RCS and power enough to deorbit itself.

[Xorth Tanovar]

My lifters usually deorbit themselves, there's the occasional one that I'll have to "climb into" and do a controlled burn to bring it back down.

I do agree with other posters, though...the spaceport itself gets cluttered easily, so I do delete those; Skorpychan has the right idea though, it may pay to build a space tug and bring the stuff back to my orbital station for re-use.

[F1refly]

If it's debris from a crash I'm proud of or if it's part of a failed mission, I only delete it after the crew has either perished or they get rescued.

I also delete all debris from my unnamed test vessels.

I also delete SOME stuff from orbit as during one of my daily launches I hit a propulsion stage from one of my Space Station modules. Almost made the mission an utter failure but I needed to persevere otherwise I'd miss my launch window

[superm18]

i never...NEVER! leave debris.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I like having debris in orbit, makes it seem a bit less 'lonely', although I do delete it around the space centre.

[Aragosnat]

Could be said I don't have much choice. Since I don't want to risk lag. Otherwise I would be happy to leave it in. At least for a little while.

[Brabbit1987]

I leave it, even if it lags wouldn't care lol. At the very most I would deorbit it manually. I just feel it's too unrealistic for me to just make it disappear.

[AfailingHORSE]

If its in Kerbin orbit, I could care less about debris in orbit unless it starts to lag, because its usually at that point at a 70km orbit and all my Kerbin docking maneuvers take place at 80km-150km. If its debris in orbit around another planet/moon, I will make an effort to deorbit it so it does risk hitting any stations or landing craft.

[monkeysee]

I'm glad you can easily remove them now. I used to attach probes to the sides of my boosters so I could find them in the tracking station and remove them in older versions.

-I did only once by total fluke run into a piece of debris on my way to orbit. The ship suddenly exploded and I scrolled through the mission readout, only to find I'd collided with the booster from an earlier mission