Ever had troubles with Kessler syndrome? a.k.a 'Gravity'

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Nope. Never. I want to, though.

[Bishop149]

I had an issue on during a space plane decent the other day where something whipped past at high speed.

Didn't have time to read the label just a rapidly approaching grey circle that was gone as fast as it appeared

[Ethan3369]

you cant really call this Kessler syndrome just bad luck in a bid to deorbit a almost spent tug giving it a periapsis of 67km with far a few passes later this happened. it crashed into the interplanetary ship it helped create. and it was the only debris in orbit.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Ethan3369

[FenrirWolf]

The thing that drives me insane is that the two goals are not mutually exclusive; frequently it's just laziness that makes movies completely implausable. If you need one or two "magic" technologies or impossibilities to make the plot work that's fine, but if the entire movie is just WRONG then I can't enjoy it at all.

It's not the whole thing is wrong. It made a better effort than most sci-fi shows do with respect to the way characters have to deal with survival in space. The only reason we bother to nitpick it is because of the parts it did get right. If it were all fictional like star wars or something then it would a non-issue.

[draeath]

I've tried it with 2 big stations with impressive solar arrays sticking out as something extra to aim at

What you have to do is to get 1 into a perfect circular orbit and then match the other one to it

The trouble is.... at 4300m/s closing speed and the 2.5km 'bubble' around your current ship, they will only be approching for something like 0.5 of a second... maybe 10 or 15 frames and you have to hope that the PC does the frame with the distance at 0'is meters, if it calculates the frame at 150 meters apart, the next frame with be with the target receding at 4.3km/sec...

Not to say it wont happen but its damned hard

There are mods out there that increase the radius significantly. Lazor can push it out to 99km. There's even one (though buggy) that can keep items permanently loaded.

[lajoswinkler]

It's not the whole thing is wrong. It made a better effort than most sci-fi shows do with respect to the way characters have to deal with survival in space. The only reason we bother to nitpick it is because of the parts it did get right. If it were all fictional like star wars or something then it would a non-issue.

If crucial parts were realistic, the whole plot would collapse because the cause of the whole problem was impossible to occur in a short time. The movie is fiction, as stated by the director. I wouldn't oppose to one card at the beggining of the movie, saying not everything depicted is true and that the movie should be taken with a grain of salt, though.

On topic, Kessler syndrome in KSP is impossible because of the reasons explained in the earlier posts.

Impacts with junk are highly unlikely unless you're targeting something. For example, yesterday I gently bumped (destroying the solar panels) in a ship stranded in solar orbit I was trying to save, after extensive orbital corrections. Last few kilometres was spent on watching and thinking "if it would hit now, it would be horrible and awesome at the same time".

[nholzric]

My current game has a dozen or so pieces of "debris" in LKO - they're all rocket bodies, not debris debris from collisions. Many of them have probe bodies and enough RCS to deorbit, but after changing the perigee and inclination from my space station I decided to leave them in orbit. I kinda like it when I see the unexpected grey indicator pass by, it makes space feel a little less lonely.

[draeath]

Hey, you can always go up there with KAS and bring them back down. You're very own Planetes missions!

[Captain Sierra]

If you were to create a debris cloud, wouldn't the orbital inclinations cause it to converge back down to a small cluster on the other side of the orbit? Just saying. Every orbit mist pass through the equator at two points opposite each other. If a craft undergoes RUD at one point, then theoretically, all teh parts should converge half an orbit later.

Personally, I have experienced the above. After docking what was one of the last modules to my as of then 300+ part station, I thrusted with the upper stage tug to clear it after making the dock and decoupling. Somehow, I managed to leave the orbital period nearly intact and just shifted the inclination (probably cuz I thrusted in an unusual direction to avoid blasting off my solar panels). Half an orbit later, it came back to say hello. I did not build a station for the rest of that update. From then on, I was conscious about de-orbiting my upper stages and stuff.

[Lazro]

If crucial parts were realistic, the whole plot would collapse because the cause of the whole problem was impossible to occur in a short time. The movie is fiction, as stated by the director. I wouldn't oppose to one card at the beggining of the movie, saying not everything depicted is true and that the movie should be taken with a grain of salt, though.

Exactly. With realistic orbital parameters, most of the movie would be talking about orbital mechanics and not, you know, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock trying to survive a hail of satellite bits.

But, on-topic, the closest I've been to collision on-orbit was 2 km, which was plenty close for me. I moved my parking orbit up from 75 km to 100 km and decommissioned my old space station.

[lajoswinkler]

If you were to create a debris cloud, wouldn't the orbital inclinations cause it to converge back down to a small cluster on the other side of the orbit? Just saying. Every orbit mist pass through the equator at two points opposite each other. If a craft undergoes RUD at one point, then theoretically, all teh parts should converge half an orbit later.

Personally, I have experienced the above. After docking what was one of the last modules to my as of then 300+ part station, I thrusted with the upper stage tug to clear it after making the dock and decoupling. Somehow, I managed to leave the orbital period nearly intact and just shifted the inclination (probably cuz I thrusted in an unusual direction to avoid blasting off my solar panels). Half an orbit later, it came back to say hello. I did not build a station for the rest of that update. From then on, I was conscious about de-orbiting my upper stages and stuff.

It depends on how the debris is distributed. Converging does occur, but if you timewarp it really fast, you can see it spreads in a ring which then displays local fluctuations as various orbital resonances are happening. It's basically what happens in Saturn's rings, forming clumps of material now and then.

[MR4Y]

Max Persistent Debris set to 0.

Never had those events.

[Whirligig Girl]

I have a friend who tends to put things at the same orbital altitude, and after he built a huge station some debris or a probe or something smacked into it.