Show off your Debris Near Misses here!

[DeepSpaceDutch]

Technically not debris, but it was unintentional so I think it counts.

I was building a geostationary network and somehow I spaced out and put one of the satellites into a retrograde orbit by mistake.

Wow...just...what the...WOW..

[SoldierHair]

Well, i don't really drop stages in orbit, so this is the closest i ever got.

[justidutch]

I have no pictures of the events, but…

In my current career save, I have been lazy in regards to keeping space neat and clean. And also in finishing missions. I've got Kerpudlians stranded all over the place, and have launched well over a hundred missions. As a result, the area between 80-90 km above Kerbin is full of trash. In my last 5 launches, just after establishing LKO and about to proceed to moving apoapsis to higher altitudes, twice I have crashed into debris - twice!!! Unfortunately both times I was in map view so didn't see the collision as it happened, but that was definitely the cause, no Krakens here.

I love good humour! I'll have to post a picture of all the trash in LKO - I'm at work right now so that will have to wait...

[Rjhere]

Although not a debris (well, technically a debris :3), I just came out of map view when I had reached transfer trajectory from surface, when I saw this:

I was like O.O

Edited February 6, 2014 by Rjhere
Picture viewer is not co-operating

[Truesilver]

I didn't know how to take screenshots at the time. I'm still newish. I had just started a docking position burn, and I wasn't paying attention to where I'd started. I was moving to the back of the target vessel, and I'm closing the distance at about 20m/s. And I'm just off grazing the small solar panels on the target. It was scary, and by the time I saw what was happening, I couldn't have fixed it if I'd been on collision course.

[AlamoVampire]

I didn't know how to take screenshots at the time. I'm still newish. I had just started a docking position burn, and I wasn't paying attention to where I'd started. I was moving to the back of the target vessel, and I'm closing the distance at about 20m/s. And I'm just off grazing the small solar panels on the target. It was scary, and by the time I saw what was happening, I couldn't have fixed it if I'd been on collision course.

yowsa talk about a close call!

Although not a debris (well, technically a debris :3), I just came out of map view when I had reached transfer trajectory from surface, when I saw this:

http://i.imgur.com/3LkkFvb.jpg

I was like O.O

did you miss impacting the ground or... ?

[Project Pluto]

While launching 43 Kerbals on a one way mission to the Mun (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=962735#post962735), I had a few nearish misses…

First 23km away.

Then another piece a bit further away…

My space is full o' junk!

[Truesilver]

So, I was doing another Duna mission, after the last one got eaten by the Kraken in deep space. New one is smaller and stronger. But I'm still getting waaay too close to the debris...This time it was much, much closer than last time. Slower, but closer. No Kerbals were harmed in the making of this album. Enjoy the terror, though.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/RWUYc/embed"></iframe>

[AlamoVampire]

When I snapped this, the near miss had already happened, and it happened FAST. The debris is the 2nd stage of the lifter <not counting the asparagus boosters> and it nearly hit me. missed by 15 meters!!!

[Callisto]

I don't have pictures... I have a video! Plenty of near misses here!

Skip to 2:36!

[cantab]

Does nearly clobbering the spaceplane hangar count?

[celem]

I've had a couple of these over the last few days in my current career, including one that made me spill coffee across my desk.

I have a lot of satellites parked up in LKO for the RT/SCANSat mods, add MW relays from KSPI and near-kerbin space is fairly populated. Now these sats all launch on lifters designed to leave no debris, i dont drop boosters in stable orbits, specifically to reduce Kessler Syndrome. What I didn't allow for however was the disposal of aerodynamic parts added to stabilise the launches with FAR. So I got a swarm of nosecones blitzing round Kerbin in a variety of stable orbits.

No sweat I think, I've played enough KSP to know the likelihood of collision is slim, even when shooting for the same orbit all the time around the little planet of Kerbin.

What I had entirely forgotten was that one of the career save's very early flights was launched westwards into a retrograde orbit. The little satellite serves no real purpose, was just something I was mucking about with, but the awesome side-effect is that during launches I now frequently see that sat zip past at 5kms relative velocity.

Last night as I lifted a 290 tonne fission reactor stack into LKO I had that little westward satellite buzz by at 400 meters distance. Was gone almost as soon as it could render. Chuckling to myself I aligned for my circularisation burn, lit the engines and started to stabilise the orbit, and suddenly 'BANG', bits of junk spinning everywhere. The aerodynamic nosecone from that westward sat had passed close enough to tear a radiator off the piloted ship. Im now very glad that KSP isnt doing impact energy calculations; the debris massed about 150kg but struck with a relative velocity of approx 5kms. Feels like I should have been instantly vaporised.

Unfortunately I was forced to abort the launch of the reactors entirely. The loss of 1 radiator wasnt going to be enough to cause catastrophic overheating, but it did hammer the efficiency of the generators to the point where there wasnt much point in having them up there. Deorbited the stack and dumped it into my nuclear graveyard.

Edited March 5, 2014 by celem

[possum]

I passed my jettisoned SM shortly on a Minmus return.

[Treveli]

Minmus return. Learned my lesson about jettisoning my stages directly into retrograde instead of away from my flight path.

Was dark and hard to see, but that's a one-kerbal capsule 5-10 meters below the jettisoned SM. Fortunately, I saw it coming. Unfortunately, I didn't have RCS on the capsule so there wouldn't have been much I could do if it had been on a collision course.

[Codey737]

I built a floating launch pad with Blimps and I got to the highest altitude and I had a piece of debris reenter right next to me. It came within loading distance

[Poryy]

One of my 16 Minmusian comsats swatted a crew exchange ship. Now I need to launch another Comsat carrier

[AlamoVampire]

lots of close calls and direct hits here. this is turning into a wonderful close call thread keep up the stories of your near misses!

[Pds314]

Me, I'm curious to know if it's possible to have Kessler Syndrome in KSP. I doubt it, as it looks like any debris that explodes ENTIRELY explodes. One booster, one piece of debris, not lots of littler pieces.

Not always, but the main problem is that for any serious danger to a spaceship or spacestation, it has to be loaded and running at at most physics warp 4, no high-speed timewarp. This means that in order to hit it within a reasonable period, you need thousands of counter-rotating objects in a very tight orbit. IRL, what happens is they slowly break down. Satellites become hundreds baseball-sized chunks of metal and tens of thousands of tiny ones in different orbits. in KSP, a satelite blows up into a few pieces and each is unlikely to hit anything. Also, the speeds are likely to be more of a slow bouncing around then multi-mile per seconds wind if the debris is in a similar orbit.

[Poryy]

Not always, but the main problem is that for any serious danger to a spaceship or spacestation, it has to be loaded and running at at most physics warp 4, no high-speed timewarp. This means that in order to hit it within a reasonable period, you need thousands of counter-rotating objects in a very tight orbit. IRL, what happens is they slowly break down. Satellites become hundreds baseball-sized chunks of metal and tens of thousands of tiny ones in different orbits. in KSP, a satelite blows up into a few pieces and each is unlikely to hit anything. Also, the speeds are likely to be more of a slow bouncing around then multi-mile per seconds wind if the debris is in a similar orbit.

I've never had debris hit a ship in orbit, but when I do transfer burns all satellites around the target body turn into guided missiles.

[Tidus Klein]

well back in the day when I had no idea of the nerva engine, I launched two rover probes after building my space station, Now I put all the RCS prob cores and other docking crap on trusses hooked to radial decups, and jettison them after docking reducing part count of the station but making lots of space crap....

so the first prop rover makes it to duna, breaks a a wheel on landing...1 of 6 and then dies because i got w key happy and landed on the dark side.

as the second is burning towards eve a prob core pops up on the radar. "no wherry's" i thought and ignore it half way through my ejection burn BAAMMM! 2 of my 3 engines explode sending me in to a death spiral. it was not until I looked at mission report that i saw i was hit by the prob core........I hate robots.

I believe I posted the finished eve rover in the old time capsule thread If any one wants to go digging.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Tidus Klein

[Bobnova]

I've had a few near misses, but only near in the space sense. A number in the 10-20km range, a few in the 4-9km range.

Only actual collision was when I staged after getting to orbit, lined up my transfer, then boosted right into my discarded stage.

I'm more careful about where and in what direction my staging happens.

[costermonger]

I don't have any pictures of it but I built a whole armada of probes to send out to various planets and then launched them all into 100x100 orbits. I staggered all the launches so that although each vehicle was in the same orbit, they were all well spaced out. The second stage of the launcher had roughly 300m/s left in the tanks after getting to that parking orbit, so when the transfer windows opened, the first stage was pretty much enough to create an elliptical Kerbin orbit before jettison and continuing with the transfer stage.

I hadn't considered that this would place those spent boosters in an orbit with a pe of ~100km but different orbital period, so the intersect processes with time. One of the last probes to depart came within 2km of a sister probe's spent booster (albeit with very little closing speed).

Made me wonder what happens if a non-active ship collides with debris. That parking orbit was just full o' stuff, and there were 12 spent boosters all sliding in and out of it.

[Padishar]

Made me wonder what happens if a non-active ship collides with debris. That parking orbit was just full o' stuff, and there were 12 spent boosters all sliding in and out of it.

Nothing that isn't running physics can collide with anything. So, as long as you aren't flying something within 2.5 km of the "collision" the ships will just pass straight through each other...

[costermonger]

Nothing that isn't running physics can collide with anything. So, as long as you aren't flying something within 2.5 km of the "collision" the ships will just pass straight through each other...

I figured as much. Thanks

[merendel]

Not the best picture but on one recent mission out to minmus to gather science and deliver a kethane refueler and managed to snap this shot.

Its 211m out there but it actualy passed withen 100 at its closest. Its the final assent stage of this very rocket that I'd jetisoned an orbit before and damn near ran into as my burn out to minmus started. Which reminds me I still need to get around to sending something out to that one to knock it out of orbit.