Collisions

[Needles_10]

Once, but without damage.

[magnemoe]

The rarest thing to hit in orbit is derbies from previous missions. The easiest thing is the craft you try to rendezvous with, for the later you only need the closest point to be less then the size of the ships.

Closest point will usually be closer than the value shown on map as it's where the two orbits intercept.

Hit an solar panel once but has had lots of close encounters, you also want to get close here.

Second most likely is hitting things you recently decoupled or dropped.

Undock lander from mothership, start the deorbit burn and ram it, very easy during docking however here the speed is low.

My Jool lander managed to ram the refueler, at both ships was huge and hard to turn and the game was an lagfeast I hit.

You can also hit stuff in the atmosphere. During aerobrake then you drop stuff it might have different drag so the decopler moves it away and the drag moved it closer. Solar panels makes this very dangerous as they have a lot of drag so the service module lags behind, then the panels breaks and the module catch up with you.

And yes be careful about dropping things with more drag than you during the final vertical accent part. they will follow straight behind you and might hit you then you release parachutes.

[AlternNocturn]

Yep. Though probably not what you imagine. So I'm on a two stage Minmus mission. Jeb takes control of the lander, undocks, moves away from the mothership, and I timewarp until the sun comes up so that I have enough light for landing. The lander's engine ignites, and as I'm adjusting my orbit in map view I hear an explosion. I come out of it and see that my lander was completely gone. I look around to figure out what happened and I see a debris cloud moving away from me. Yep, the Lander smacked right back into the service vehicle, which was mostly destroyed except for the capsule. I rescued those guys and brought them back, regretfully without Jebediah.

[G4S3FR]

My space station is experiencing kessler syndrome, i'm currently taking down all of the debris around it manually!

[TaranisElsu]

I once was trying to rendezvous with a manned lander that got stranded in Munar orbit. I misjudged the approach and the lander slammed into my rescue craft at a few hundred m/s, killing everyone aboard both vessels and creating a massive debris field

Edited November 8, 2013 by TaranisElsu

[Godot]

I once was trying to rendezvous with a manned lander that got stranded in Munar orbit. I miss judged the approach and the lander slammed into my rescue craft at a few hundred m/s, killing everyone aboard both vessels and creating a massive debris field

No Kandra Kullock ehm Kandra Kerman who survived because she was outside at the time of collision and was able to return to earth, using the things that are present in orbit?

Edited October 12, 2013 by Godot

[zekew11]

from .18.2:

technically, I wasn't quite in orbit when my single launch three man duna and return mission (which was way overbuilt,~120 tons of lander fully fueled) found a ~50 ton (empty) orbital injection stage that *someone* had recently decoupled during the test mission.

120 ton duna lander (with 4 nervas): shattered to component pieces

~200 ton orbital injection stage that had been pushing the craft around 2 gs: all but a couple parts obliterated; one tank did stayed connected to its T30 and ended up interplanetary

~50 ton empty orbital injection stage that got in the way: vaporized

one radial chute managed to cling to the pod through it all... the crew got to go swimming a few months earlier than anticipated.

[Deathsoul097]

Just the other day actually. I was returning the ascent stage of my mun lander to the CM, and slightly mis-judged how close I was when I started to burn. I now have a debris field, a pod of three shaken kerbals, two of which had to EVA at high speeds through the debris field to return to the CM, which consisted of the pod, its docking port and a parachute, all in a low orbit over the moon, right where I usually take my missions through.

[Thorbane]

I crashed into my own station trying to rendezvous. Forgot I'd set mechjeb to limit the throttle while fine tuning things, so when it came time to brake, I couldn't. Somehow everyone survived, which was incredible considering it was a 150~ m/s collision.

[ludsoe]

I was launching a rather large section to a space station, while circularising my orbit space debris flew between my engines and hit a internal pylon causing my rocket to implode on itself littering the sky with even more debris.

[Kryssandra]

I wish I had the problem of hitting things in orbit... the one thing I've yet to master is getting two craft to rendezvous in space >.<

[minerman30]

"accidentally..."

I'm still laughing.

[wolfedg]

Ive had a few close calls while docking. Protip: De-activate the main engine when you get close to docking , Switching modes from docking to staging is a sure recipe for disaster if you forget.

[Astronomer]

Well, that was a head-on dock.