Opinions on Debris

[zxczxczbfg]

This may show my lack of experience, but I think the little ring of debris in my 100km parking orbit is a sign of achievement and a sort of history of the Program. (Also, it does have a use in my savegames, since many of the tanks are still fueled; most of the debris that isn't aerodynamic fairings is half-fueled rocket bodies that I discarded because of my OCD about autostaging mid-burn, and sometimes I top off my tankers from the half-empty boosters using KAS tethers.) Anyone else have a specific opinion on debris?

[PeteMcCartney]

It's down to how you want to play the game.

My only issue with debris in the past was that it made it difficult to select the ship that you wanted from map view, but now that's been alleviated it's purely down to how you want manage your space program.

In short, revel in your beautiful ring of rocketry-related detritus!

[Godot]

I learned to avoid it (by proper staging, so that all lifter stages are decoupled when the Periapsis still is below Kerbins surface and all interplanetary stages are either decoupled in deep space, or during reentry).

But my games in earlier versions also had a ring of debris around Kerbin (stopped it, when I saw the negative impact on my framerate)

[lajoswinkler]

I agree, but I can't allow it to accumulate because it slows down the performance. If that wasn't the issue, I'd never delete anything.

[Lar-E]

I love debris, for all the reasons listed above; but my computer is a bit of a dinosaur. How much do you limit your max. debris? (I think I have mine set to 50)

[katateochi]

I'm in the don't create debris camp. I see it as an extra challenge to design rockets so they don't drop stages while in orbit. I never remove debris though, so where there is debris (usually on planet surfaces) its a memorial to something that went wrong.

[aramil]

I make missions to de-orbit/collect/destroy debris when I feel the need.

Makes it a more inclusive & an extra challenge

[xzxvrx]

I try and get as much debris as I can. It makes things more interesting with huge upper stages coming 4km away from your station.

[Scotius]

I'm leaving half-full stages in orbit - just in case Rest is being cleaned when i have some free time, and a mood to watch stuff burning in re-entry

[chuangatronic]

I generally design to prevent orbital debris, though I do have a bunch of planetary debris since I design my transfer stages to crash into the celestial body I'm aiming for. It leaves a bunch of girders and octagonal struts for colonization efforts (or so I'd like to think lol)

[Demon_82]

I wanted my debris field to stay there, but my current PC wasn't happy about it, I was loosing about 15 to 20 fps just for having it so I had to do an orbital cleaning xD

[Epthelyn]

If I'm making a space station or doing other maneuvers in orbit I care about debris because it will hang around for a while. When launching things, I don't often mind additional parts floating around in orbit because getting rid of it requires either extra care when building a rocket or having to do extra burns to raise the orbit above the atmosphere; since not every rocket I send up has RCS, I can't drop spent stages off into a 20km orbit and go the rest of the way with the mono-propellent for example.

Now that 0.23 has considerably boosted my performance in orbit I'm probably going to be even less caring about debris; it'll take longer for the 100km LKO ring to destroy my framerate and I can handle more parts in one rocket at a slightly more playable rate

[Thomas988]

My computer is pretty good, but by no means is it a gaming computer. So I delete debris. Also I get OCD.

[Rakshasa]

Unlimited and try to put that junk in degrading orbits...

[Tw1]

I used to just leave it there- most of my designs minimise it anyway. But I don't want it to slow down my computer. Pruned it down to 40 the other day.

[Geschosskopf]

I leave very little debris due to it's impact on performance. Either I put probe cores on my last boosters so they can deorbit themselves or I periodically go to the tracking station and terminate/recover it there.

The only exceptions are when I have a particularly cool disaster (deliberate or not) and a few parts survive. Then I'll leave the wreckage there and even send a mission to plant a flag telling the story. But even then, I just leave the big pieces, deleting things like RCS blocks.

[Daze]

I try everytime to leave nodebris in LKO, but if it happen... i'm happy! It add realism to my space program

[Kasuha]

I used to drop junk everywhere, then delete it in Tracking station. Then I learned to overengineer a bit, take the junk with me and crash it into something along the way. On my last missions in 0.22 I was dropping empty fuel tanks from the interplanetary stage on the surface during each landing.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

I see debris as a way of "leaving your mark" on the interstellar space, whereas flags are for doing so at the surface. Ever since, I've been trying to create debris rings.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I spam it as much as I can. Makes thing REALLY interesting

[dr_jt]

I try not to leave it but I have debris set to 0 for performance reasons.

[merendel]

I have 3 primary lifters for various weight ranges. The central final stage on each of those designes has a small probe core, a pair of RCS tanks and a pair of thrusters straped to the sides. Initial stages always end up suborbital anyway and that last stage either uses RCS to flip around and do a deorbit burn once detached or just deorbits on RCS if its totaly spent(takes longer). This keeps my launch debris down to almost nothing. I tend to try and crash injection stages into the target planet on arival so very little extra is cluttering up space although I do have some flotsem floating in interplanetary space.

[Deadpangod3]

So I'm attempting to build a station in my sandbox .23 save.

At 100 km.

My standard parking orbit.

Aka, debris central.

I had done a few mun missions for the fun of it, and I had tried to make a spaceplane with the rapier engines, and I had reached app with it, when WHAM!! A transfer stage from one of my mun missions slams into the spaceplane, making it disintegrate, and, to my anger, circularizing the orbit.

So I'm building my station, with the debris circling Kerbin.

When a wing connected flys by.

Then a structural wing.

And then a rapier.

And all the rest :/

And the Gravity re-enactment begins

My station gets pelted with debris, tearing every single module off and blowing it to bits. I had spent an hour on that station, and it was looking awesome.

Oh debris.

Art thou a heartless *****

[Kinglet]

Debris + Kerbal Attatchment System = Lots of fuel

I like to build small ships which suck out/land debris. Once I had a kethane mine and I landed half empty transfer stages to use them as fuel tanks.

[Tank Buddy]

Now that debris is toggle-able in the map view, it bothers me not.