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

[Krosulhah]

Well, i have had many, but i will share my best, and what taught me a very important lesson.

Using the FASA asteroid mod i managed to put an asteroid on a path that flew closeby to kerbin (well, minmus) every so often, and a while after i decided to land on minmus, ran out of fuel so i couldnt move it if something happened (Didn't plan Properly.) and the asteroid decied to flyby and smash into me. no more landing. and since then i have never strayed further than the Mun.

[Spence1012]

I had something pretty large (can't remember.. real specific I know:P ) whizz by me once but that's about it. Scary part was that I was orbiting Kerbin prograde in a little station and it was orbiting retrograde, so all I saw was this flash while on EVA that scared the crap out of me because I was looking right at the direction it was coming from. Basically went like "Hey, why is the distance on that thing decrea- OH MY GOD!!!" Must have passed within 100-150 meters or so. Needless to say, I bumped my orbit up by a few thousand meters.

Thank goodness there was no collision. That would have killed my mini station.

EDIT: DAT DEBRIS FIELD

[Coga19000]

I have turned off Persisent Debris. My computer is slow enough as is

[Randazzo]

Collided with a space station once. After burning to intercept I couldn't see it anywhere... that's because I was looking the wrong way. Suddenly I found it when it plowed through my ship and kept on going apparently undamaged, but spinning wildly.

Incidentally, it was my most accurate intercept course ever plotted.

[justidutch]

When I first started playing, nearing the end of completing the science tree I had lots and lots and lots of debris, 70-80 km orbit. Not once but twice I smashed into debris as I was trying to circularize a new ship in orbit. It was so completely shocking, I almost had a heart attack. Twice.

[Cuky]

I once had a collision with lander from previous mission that was left in orbit around Minmus. I have just put a small science station in orbit and two came together after some time. Luckily there was no one onboard the station when that thing happened.

[Uncle Mort]

Only once; rendezvoused with my orbital station with the second stage of the launcher still attached, set my approach and then decoupled the last stage. All well until I neared the station, turned the ship and fired the engine to reduce my velocity. That's when the spent rocket stage came barrelling past and hitting the station full on.

[Mighty1]

I had an empty Jumbo smack my station once. The escape pod didn't help the poor kerbals in the hichiker module as it took the brunt of the collision. They were tumbling in orbit all the way to the new update when I started a new save

[Redd]

This thread is awesome to read. I've only had near-misses and I nearly had a heart attack both times.

Second time that happened I decided it was too close for comfort, and I redesigned any ship going into orbit from that point not to leave any debris. All dropped stages are either planned to drop on a ballistic trajectory or have probe cores and a little fuel / rcs to de-orbit themselves.

I'd love it if I was able to recover stages to limit the funds spent on them, but with everything essentially disappearing after 2km that seems unlikely.

[DuoDex]

I once, if you can believe it, smacked into a jettisoned fuel tank en route to Duna. The fuel tank was from a trip to Jool.

[nekogod]

I've not had a debris hit in orbit, I did once have a ridiculous lifter though that had to stage early, a fact I forgot when I decided to put it in a retrograde orbit. As I dropped the first stage at a height of 1200m or so I realised my mistake too late as it fell down onto and destroyed the VAB.

[Renegrade]

I once, if you can believe it, smacked into a jettisoned fuel tank en route to Duna. The fuel tank was from a trip to Jool.

Wait.. WHAT? In interplanetary space?? O.o

[DuoDex]

Wait.. WHAT? In interplanetary space?? O.o

Yep. I saw the trajectories crossing and eyeballed it and said, whoa, I might end up seeing it in vessel view. I got a bit closer then that.

[Renegrade]

Yep. I saw the trajectories crossing and eyeballed it and said, whoa, I might end up seeing it in vessel view. I got a bit closer then that.

Wow... just the odds of that... man, some really "good" luck there

(also crowning moment of hilarious awesome..)

WARNING: Objects in map view may be closer than they appear!

[Madrias]

I had a major oops a few days ago... I took out my Minmus Space Station from the surface of Minmus. Spray of debris from a ship that was supposed to pass close to Minmus (using a gravity slingshot), but wasn't paying too close attention to it. Sprayed debris from about 4 kilometers altitude, hurling my interplanetary ship's broken pieces right through my space station.

I've adopted the "All debris stays in orbit until I deorbit it" rule, as well as "No resets, no reverts," so it was hilarious and painful at the same time.

[Thomas988]

How do you people have collisions in orbit like it's a normal thing? Is it? I've never had a collision in orbit ever! I've come close to debris, yes, but never has it done damage to my spacecraft or anything.

Maybe I just don't have enough debris in orbit, or play KSP enough.

[Madrias]

It's a bit of both, Thomas. Lots of time playing KSP and enough debris in orbit to make things interesting.

[Voyager55]

Yes, being the genius that I am, everything I launch goes into a perfectly equatorial 80km orbit, even the retrograde launches. I always assumed that it was far to unlikely to ever collide with anything to bother worrying about it. Then one day a retrograde piece of debris incinerated my space station, during a docking maneuver with the station I saw the yellow indicator closing in at ridiculous speeds, and before I could react the space station was hit and exploded into bits.

[Tex_NL]

I've had unintentional crashes on more than one occasion.

After decoupling from a station I often let MechJeb perform the 'return from moon' manoeuvre or perform a de-orbit burn. Just my luck my craft was aimed directly for my station when MechJeb opened the throttle.

However I have never actually collided with an unrelated craft/debris. But pieces have come within physics range. Pretty scary to see a piece of debris coming that close that fast.

[Gargamel]

I call it docking with emphasis.

[merendel]

Never had anything just crash into eachother while I was siting there to watch it where neither object was in the proccess of a manuver. I've had bits of flotsam float back and bump into the station but those were mostly just let go at some point and drifted back at 1 or 2 m/s. I have had multipule accidents involving intercepting a target I intended to dock with however. Flying to meet a station/fuel depot only to find out my closest approach actually intersects and I didnt start a deceleration burn in time to stop.

Outside of intentional rendezvous that went bad I've only had one major crash and one of the objects was in the middle of a burn at the time. I'd launched a mission to somewhere, cant remember where now. Got it into orbit and ditched the nearly spent booster that got it up there and setup my manuver to leave. One orbit later I started my burn, 30 seconds into that burn I crashed directly into the back side of the booster stage I'd jettisoned an orbit before. I got more dedicated to not leaving spent crap in orbit after that one.

[Superfluous J]

I just posted a video on Youtube where I crashed with my station, but that was on approach so it probably doesn't count. It was a pretty fast approach, however.

Link goes to right before the crash.

[SpenSpaceCorp]

The most epic unintentional collision I had was when I had a science station orbiting the Mun equatorially. I undocked a science lander and put it into a polar orbit. I collect a bit of science, time warp, and repeat. By the time I make it around the Mun (I'm in map mode not really paying too close attention), The game lags, and I hear explosions. I switch back to vessel mode and realized I must have had the same orbital period and height as the station, colliding with it at a 90 degree angle! There was not much left !

[Sidereus]

Nope. I usually clean up debris by either making sure it impacts with the ground or by terminating it in the tracking station, so there usually isn't much out there for me to run into.

[magnemoe]

Crash with something you undocked or decopled

Most common is then you undock lander from mothership/ upper stage and tell mechjeb to land it, this might result in lander raming it as you don't know then it will do the deorbit burn, less an issue on other types of burns where you have an node and can check if its clear or move away.

Second type is crashing then matching orbit / speed with target. My best here was with an asteroid, this totally destroyed my tug