Collisions

[Jeb KerBoom]

Has anyone here ever accidentally hit something in orbit? If so, did it destroy your craft?

[NGTOne]

No, not really. In my early games, I tended to have a lot of close calls, though.

[Giggleplex777]

I was deorbiting my spent tug when it hit my space station. I've done something like this at least 5 times.

[Sapphire]

Earlier on in my space career, I was doing one of my first rendevous with my space station and while waiting to catch up to it, I alt-tabbed and kinda forgot what I was doing. Came back and apparently I had bombed through a few sets of solar panels. But nothing crazy like being taken out by a satellite moving thousands of meters per second.

[RickRastardly]

Sort of, Docking has just been introduced, however when I came to attach something onto my new space station I realised I had connected the port the wrong way round, so nothing could dock with it. I decided to decommission the Space station, however it had no fuel to deorbit it. My solution was to retro-nudge it using another spacecraft. This was working nicely, but I got bored and as I increased thrust, something broke off the Space station. The pusher craft that I was using to slow the orbit of the space station then went right through the middle of my poor space station creating a MASSIVE debris field orbiting Kerbin.

[Specialist290]

I've accidentally taken out more sets of solar panels while lining things up for docking than I care to count.

[nimbim]

I've sent ~100 pieces of debris in a 100km retrograde orbit. No luck yet.

[astropapi1]

I once crashed a probe into a spent fairing while circularizing. That's what I get for making Kessler happy.

[regex]

I've accidentally taken out more sets of solar panels while lining things up for docking than I care to count.

^this.

.

[boxman]

Nothing more major than destroying a solar panel or two by bumping into it.

[sicarius]

A few months ago I intentionally hit two probes. Sent one into a retrograde orbit and another into the opposite. I felt quite a bit of accomplishment when I got two small objects moving at +4 km/s relative velocity to hit each other . Never been able to do it again though and no accidental collisions that I can think of.

[magnemoe]

Not random derbies, however I have managed to hit things I have either intercept for docking, or stuff like the mothership after undocking.

During my Jool landing I managed to have two tries before success, first time I hit the refuel ship: doing the deorbit burn and thought I would pass close but over it however then deorbiting you height decreases.

Next try and I managed to hit an battery module I dropped in Jools atmosphere, this followed me down and I hit it on the way up.

Both was the only fatal incidents I lost an solar pannel during intercept, and a seperator during another landing but it did no damage.

[DiscoLizard]

Absolutely! I have accidentally hit debris while en route to a solid orbit. I typically launch into the same 0 degree plane every time, so most of my debris is centralized along that plane. While launching an EVE lander the vehicle was struck by a large fuel tank, sadly it destroyed the entire launch vehicle in the blink of an eye. I had to review the crash data meticulously to figure out at the end what actually happened. This is a SUPER rare event though, so I am actually a bit happy that it happened to me.

[Felsmak]

Not yet, but I once tried to do it on purpose in my LolSat program - two satellites, two directions, one orbit. One could say it was a lot harder than I had hoped, and eventually they were both used for testing the then-new reentry effects instead.

[KAO]

yes, it was during a rendezvous over the Mun

moment of collision

aftermath

one ship ran out of oxygen, the other ran out of electricity. I used KAS to bolt a solar panel onto what was left of the lander, which lost some radial batteries

[zekes]

"accidentally..."

[Moar Boosters]

Sort of.

I detached my launch stage, setup a maneuver node and then propelled my craft straight back into the launch stage. The craft was crippled but they were able to deorbit and get home safely.

[ArmchairGravy]

I was coaching my friend through his first rendezvous. He was doing fine, but got a little happy with the thrust while chasing his markers around. The camera view shifted into the de-orbit view, and I told him to keep an eye on his target as I knew he was close. He panned the camera around just in time to see his ship rendezvous with his target's fuel tank at 15 m/s. We decided it was a successful rendezvous.

[Goldham]

if your Definition includes accidently staging my Fighter's Missiles near a station then yes.

[[email protected]]

My tug was moving the stations ship docking ports. when something slammed into the stations command pod that had docking port on it destroying any hope of docking. A side note I have 8 kerbs that now permanently live up there

[Deadpangod3]

So I had the ordan telescope mod and had deployed a Hubble-replica into obit, after a look at Jool I turned the telescope off and was about to rotate the satellite to point at eve so I could see it, when suddenly, I see a piece of debris, one in a trillion chances... I thought, and sat back to watch it fly past closely, but then it appears to be coming closer then expected at high speed, when it's at about 1 km I come to the realization. IT'S COMING STRAIGHT AT ME!!!! Naturally I do what anyone would do, FULL THROTTLE RCS AWAY ERMAGERD!!!! Either the engine didn't want to do its job, or I just fail at evasive maneuvers, cause it came just within 20 meters, afterwards i found it was the circularizaton stage of my Sputnik I had launched a few hours ago. And guess what,

IT WAS ONE OF ONLY THREE PIECES OF DEBRIS IN ORBIT!

Only three pieces of debris in orbit, and one is determined to take my Hubble space telescope down.

Talk about one in a billion chances...

And does the orbit stage you had ejected two minutes ago coming back for revenge on your station count? (no idea how it happened)

Edited September 29, 2013 by Deadpangod3

[goldenpeach]

I have made a craft with a orbital module consisting a three kerbal capsule,a rockomax x-200-8(the smallest rockomax fuel tanks that can fit perfectly the diameter of a mainsail) and small rockomax 24-77(not the largest radial engine but not the smallest(they are orange)).

I was on a higher orbit than the space station(my plan was to dock with it) and made(by using mechjeb,I have to be honest) a Hohmann transfer to approach the station.

The burn was so precise that the ship collided with the station.

The station was literally torn apart by the collision.

I don't know why the ship can do so precise burns,but it's cool

[SunJumper]

Does the Mun count?

[nine_iron]

Ive taken out solar panels with kerbals before, overzealous jet packing.

In my very first attempt at docking I wondered why my craft was spinning away in pieces... quickly realised I had smashed them together at a few hundred m/s! Best to make that mistake early on!

[SofusRud]

In my early days i built a mun rocket. in order to fit the two nuke engines on my standard launcher at the time i had to flip them upside down. The idea being to do a 180 before continuing. however, I forgot about this and ended up plowing straight into my empty booster, 5 seconds after separation.