Have you ever had a non-intentional collision in orbit?

[Torham234]

I think I have seen this thread before

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Never tried this but if you want Space Debris to take you down, you should go for Kessler Bombs. Instead of going 90° at Launch, you should take them 270° so the debris Comes right at you in Orbit

BTW. This is not my Album, just saw this on Reddit.

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[Torham234]

Kessler Bombs.

Wow, that is insane, hilarious and fascinating all at the same time

[Hodo]

Never tried this but if you want Space Debris to take you down, you should go for Kessler Bombs. Instead of going 90° at Launch, you should take them 270° so the debris Comes right at you in Orbit

BTW. This is not my Album, just saw this on Reddit.

So they create the current Earth satellite and debris mapping around the Earth in real life.

[-RanZ-]

Never tried this but if you want Space Debris to take you down, you should go for Kessler Bombs. Instead of going 90° at Launch, you should take them 270° so the debris Comes right at you in Orbit

BTW. This is not my Album, just saw this on Reddit.

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That is epic, I kind of want to do that just for a challenge! I rarely leave any debris in Kerbin orbit, it is always de-orbited or sent into orbit around the Sun. Since restarting my save in .20 I think I have maybe 2 or 3 pieces of debris orbiting.

[Tassyr]

Yup. One of my early missions went all apollo 13 on me when I whapped a discarded probe from a previous launch. ripped off a bit of my RCS, my Mechjeb module, and an engine.

I ended up having to float the crew over to the lander module (which broke loose) and attempt a powered landing on Kerbin.

[MilkToast]

... to recover three Kerbals i accidentally launched with a rocket...

It's good to know I'm not the only one who does that.

[Aladran]

Several time when performing space docking and paying lazy attention to my approaching speed.

God bless F5 and his brother F9

[Kinglet]

My crew transfer maneuvers are quite bumpy. Too bumpy. And they usually are on the dark side without lights.

[Kromey]

It was back in .19, or maybe .18. I'd just seen a YouTube video (probably Scott Manley or something) that mentioned planning re-entry so as to land near a specific target (in that case the KSC) -- something I had never done before, or even thought to do! (I'd just get back to the ground/ocean wherever I happened to end up.)

So I quickly launched a mission into orbit, circularized, separated from the mostly-spent ascent stage, and then spun around and started my re-entry burn.

A booster went flying past me less then 50 m away. I had just enough time to think "Whew, that was close!" before I smacked straight into the second one! Cue pretty explosion, and somehow the capsule is intact, although its chute is gone now, as is its engine. Still had its almost-full fuel tank though. Unfortunately I'd gotten enough of a burn already that I was on a re-entry course, so a rescue mission wasn't possible.

That's when I started attaching Sepratrons to every single stage that wasn't going to be separated while still in atmo. And always looking where I'm going...

[TinMissileMan]

Back in .16, I had a lot of elliptical debris from my (very nooby and inefficient) Mun lander. I have seen debris come from 2000km-600km. But never an impact.

[Xacktar]

First of all, this thread is a great read.

My collision happened on the second space station I'd ever built. I was still learning how to dock and was concentrating on bringing a new crew module to the station, carefully adjusting my approach...

When a disembodied engine blew through the station, hitting one of the main connecting docking ports points and shattering three large solar panels. Half of the station flew to the left of my approaching module, half flew to the right and my part, which had only been about 20 meters from docking, sailed right through the wreckage with me laughing my head off.

EDIT: I just remembered I might have a screenshot of the aftermath, lemme see if I can find it.

Found it! That station was a disaster anyways, after reloading a save the thing collapsed a second time when I tried to move it, lol.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Xacktar

[nadreck]

I started with KSP in 0.21.1 and after figuring enough of stuff out (including MechJeb) I started building a space station. While I've never had a Kessler type incident, I do try to stay on top of debris and get rid of it (regularly de-orbiting or terminating it), I have had three accidents worth noting. As I started construction on the space station I brought up sub-assemblies and docking them into a space station. I also brought up Fuel, Oxidizer and RCS Fuel to keep the stations tanks topped up docking the tanker then un-docking and de-orbiting. As well I would bring up ships bound for deeper space and refuel at my station. A couple of times with outbound ships I undocked, used a little RCS to start moving off, then would go into MAP to plot the next manuever (even though I used mechJeb, I found the map display useful, if fatally distracting) because not once, but twice turned on full thrust from there without checking outside MAP what was in front of my space crafts nose, this resulted in collisions, once at more than 50m/s.

After I was satisfied with my LKO station I decided I wanted to build a deep space craft (a super tanker/station that could fly to Jool with a bunch of landers and rovers), so when I started building that, it was attached to my space station. Soon the complexity of the combined object had maxed out my processing power and ram and I decided to separate them. I moved them just outside the limit of the [ and ] swap keys and the processing power demanded seemed much lower. However, I still managed a collision between a tanker bound for my station under rendezvous autopilot with my deepspace craft, it did enough damage to make me relaunch half of the major core, luckily as I had made the two halves symmetrical I had kept the design of the craft in my VAB files.

Here is a picture of the ship and station when they were still docked:

[Aragosnat]

Not yet. But, I do have debries set up to 50 parts. Also reacently saw one of my orbiting craft fly over my craft while I waslifting off from Kerbin. So Not yet will work for myself still.

[jjwb22101]

Only happened to me once. A spent stage from a command pod i launched into orbit collided with the station i was trying to dock to. Not sure if it counts, but it definitely ruined my day (not to mention the days of anyone living in the station).

[relin]

Sent a probe into orbit and during some testing, I started getting a rather significant framerate drop. Before I could say "wtf?" my big, difficult-to-replace space station flew through the screen and clipped one of my solar panels. Thankfully, I was able to return to the launch pad and salvage myself from a Gravity-type disaster.

[Sylon00]

I haven't been playing long and thought I was doing a good job keeping space clean. Turns out that I have 11 pieces of debris in various places, 3 of them are large tanks floating around in Kerbin orbit anywhere between 60-100k. I hope to avoid them, but I think it would be pretty epic if one came flying thru one of my outgoing ships. Preferably without killing a crew, lol.

[ASTRO_alec106]

I have horrible debris management skills to say the least, I once was finishing up a circulization burn for a rocket when a piece of space debris smacked straight into the center of my rocket dooming it to catostrophic failure.

[hebdomad]

Yes. While de-orbiting stuff near my orbital constructions. Note to self. Make sure your orbital tug is facing AWAY from your space station / interplanetary mission before de-orbiting.

Also docking at high speed it not good either....

[ZodiaK]

is anyone else shouting

GRAVITY

GRAVITEEEEEEEY

GRAVIOLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

[el_coyoto]

Well, I remember the first time I tested a 1st stage return à la SpaceX.

I had an asparagus lift that brought the 1st stage and the payload to LKO with enough fuel remaining in the 1st for a de-orbit burn and (hopefully) a soft touch down at KSC.

During the test, I noticed that the 1st stage lacked attitude control : no RCS and no torque apart from the 1st stage probe.

"No problem, I'll just turn the whole stack retrograde before decoupling the 1st stage to save time, what could go wrong?"

Things then escalated quickly and happened just like in a Danny video :

1. Decouple the 1st stage, hold retrograde then mess around with a maneuvre node to compute the burn from LKO to KSC
   
2. Burn for de-orbit at full thrust with the powerful engine mounted on the 1st stage
   
3. *Spidey sense tingling* "I'm so stupi..."
   
4. KER-BOOM!
   

I still remember this incident because the 1st stage had time to pick up a lot of speed relative to the payload in a very short time (Mainsails FTW!), so the collision was ... well unexpected. I just had the time to realize how stupid I was before the 1st stage plowed into the payload at ~300 m/s relative speed, and I couldn't stop laughing at my own stupidity.

The whole payload got crushed, leaving only a few random bits of landing legs and antennas and the 1st stage only lost 1 fuel tank. Awesome...

Conclusion : "Ramming always works!"

[PTNLemay]

is anyone else shouting

GRAVITY

GRAVITEEEEEEEY

GRAVIOLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

I think that's only you.

*pats Zodiak gently on the head*

[Simon Ross]

Yep, only yesterday. Manned mission to Duma, let Mechjeb calculate the transfer, hit the fast forward key and did a very hard, very unexpected landing on the Mun which just happened to cross the flight path :-(

[SargeRho]

I smacked my Munar lander into the CSM of an Apollo-style mission recently, and destroyed the engine. I had to transfer fuel to the ascent stage, and jettison the service module of the CSM, and then use the ascent stage's thrust to shove the pod back to Kerbin.

[Guber K.]

Just had one yesterday. Sent a probe to Duna to collect science and was tweaking the orbit to get closer. Saw a puff of dust and then nothing...My probe and Ike had arrived at the same place at the same time. What are the odds?

Also lost a probe around Jool once, similar thing. Probe was there, then it wasn't. I'm pretty sure it hit one of Jool's moons.