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Kessler Syndrome

Ironwatsas

By Ironwatsas
in KSP1 Discussion

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SDIR

SDIR

Posted
Posted

I usually don't have much space debris, but on a couple occasions I've left landers in retrograde orbit around the Mun (you know, just in case?). It turns out that every 30 minutes or so, those empty landers come within a couple hundred meters of several space stations...good think they are just far enough away. Plus they are heading in the opposite direction, so the relative velocity is around 1km/s :P

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Pds314

Pds314

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Posted

I've come within 1.4 km of a piece of debris while returning from a high orbit. The thing with Kessler syndrome is that the only objects that can easily run into eachother are the loaded ones. This makes Kessler syndrome a LOT harder to start. If I have 2 space stations in LKO, The odds that two of them will encounter eventually are pretty good, considering that if I have good aim and bad habits they are probably all within a 5km*1 degree toroid around Kerbin. 1 degree is about 12 km, so assuming they each have a radius of 20 meters, so if station A goes within 40 meters of station B, KABLAM. Pi*40^2 is about 5000 m^2. 5000/60,000,000 is not a terribly good chance, especially considering we are talking about whether it will EVER happen. We could always argue that there are two points in the orbit, not one, where it could happen, so maybe 10,000/60,000,000 is a better estimate for whether their orbits intersect close enough for an eventual collision. Still, we are talking about a 0.016% chance of it ever happening.

The thing that makes this dangerous in real life is the non-linear way it stacks. If you add a third station, you now have two more possibly collisions. If you have 101 stations, you have 5100 times more likely that a collision will eventually occur, putting it as a near-certainty. Once it does happen, the spacestations would realistically be smashed into a thousand small but lethal pieces. Those would only have 1/3rd the odds of hitting a station, but still, 99 potential targets and 2000 pieces of debris, each with an odds of about 1/40 of hitting something important eventually. Once one did, 1000 new pieces of debris would be generated and the whole system would slowly turn into a hundred thousand pieces of garbage.

In terms of when they will be able to hit, anything that could hit eachother move at a relative speed averaging about 12 m/s with respect to longitude. This isn't to say that the impact speed would only be 12 m/s, but the as far as longitude goes, that is it.

Now, this gives 3 seconds in an orbit when they could be near eachother out of ~1730 seconds in total. 3 seconds of possible collisions in a given 340000 seconds. Of course, only 1/280 close encounters would actually be at the appropriate time for a collision.

This gives something like 100 megaseconds, or for an average two satelites destined to collide, 3 years between collision intercepts.

So in KSP, a given two satelites that will collide will take an average of a year and a half to do so if they are in the aforementioned similar orbits.

So if you are in a spacestation with 10,000 tiny pieces of debris in the aforemention tight orbit (which would let you physically see markers for 500 seperate objects, filling your screen with numbers and letters if you looked prograde or retrograde, at any given point in time, there would be an object about 400 meters away prograde or retrograde and therefore you would pass harmlessly by about two objects a minute, you'd have about an 18% chance of hitting in around 3 years or ever.)

In other words, depsite seeing debris go by within a few hundred meters about once an hour, it would most likely never hit you, no matter how long you sat there.

Also, since the average angle of impact would be something like .3 degrees or so, the impact's average speed would be about 17 m/s in total, easily survivable. Even the worst-case scenario doesn't hit you at near orbital velocity, neigh, only 50 m/s, that MIGHT require a module to be replaced or a Kerbal to have to be evacuated, but it certainly isn't going to induce Kessler-syndrome.

Long-story short, Debris is of very, very little concern in KSP. No matter the difference in orbital velocity, it will still take years for two average potentially-colliding bodies to collide (as even though encounters are more frequent, the window for an impact would be shorter), and it will still take much more debris in orbit than KSP can reasonably simulate in order to make a difference. Even with hundreds of "debris bomb" launches, it would still take decades for a typical ship to get hit.

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iDan122

iDan122

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Posted

I just put a probr body on the last carrier stage complete with 4 side solar panels to give power. Once my payload detaches, i turn that other stage and de-orbit them. Some of them have enough fuel to go and land on the Mun, i did that once out of boredom.

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3mon

3mon

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Posted

I also have a nice cloud of debris following the same orbit that my space station, about 1km behind it. Most of it comes from decoupling the remmants of stupidly overpowered rockets i use to get to rendezvous with the station, before switching to RCS only for the docking. I'll have to do some clean up some of these days... Or not and see how long it takes before the inevitable collision :P

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zpox357

zpox357

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Posted

My save file has reached the point, where when I look up over KSC, more often than not there is a piece of debris zipping across the sky. It's beautiful!

As for collisions, I have un-docked from a space-station, then accidently hit it whilst de-orbiting. I've never been hit by debris though. Shame... after seeing gravity I had always wanted a similar scenario to arise.

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  • 6 months later...
WhiteWeasel

WhiteWeasel

Posted
Posted (edited)

I wonder if we can get it as bad as wall-e?

wallespace.png

Not quite there, but pretty close:

CPsuIo8.jpg

Those Fifa balls from the dev mod are great kesslifiers, and with a 1000 m/s impact tolerance one of those hitting your ship will cause some harm.

I1LRJFk.jpg

FYI those aren't explosion particles.

vKFnLJ5.jpg

Edited by WhiteWeasel
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  • 2 years later...
Dynastic Labs

Dynastic Labs

Posted
Posted
On 11.12.2013 at 7:23 PM, zpox357 said:

My save file has reached the point, where when I look up over KSC, more often than not there is a piece of debris zipping across the sky. It's beautiful!

As for collisions, I have un-docked from a space-station, then accidently hit it whilst de-orbiting. I've never been hit by debris though. Shame... after seeing gravity I had always wanted a similar scenario to arise.

Same thing WITH me. i can see sometimes even ships which are on LKO

 

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