Debris - Community Care Factor Poll

[AlexinTokyo]

Do you worry about potential Kessler Syndrome? Or are you an orbital litterbug?

AKA a poll to determine the community care factor for space debris.

Please feel free to post hints, tips, tricks, pics, craft files, etc., both for cleanup missions and for debris-less designs.

Edited March 17, 2014 by AlexinTokyo

[Red Iron Crown]

I generally don't worry about it. Kessler syndrome is not really a concern, you can have thousands of pieces of debris in LKO and the chances of encountering one, let alone hitting it, are remote.

That said, a lot of debris in orbit does impact performance, so I've turned the debris slider all the way down. Before I learned that trick I used to put probe cores on my final booster stages so I could deorbit them easily.

[Comrade Jenkens]

If the debris has landed on Kerbin then i'll end the flight. Otherwise i'll just leave it.

[SSSPutnik]

I just turn the debris slider all the way down too.

[OrtwinS]

I will never 'cheat' my way out of debris by slider or 'self-destruct'. I will live with the consequences of my littering, if any.

I attempt to fit all orbital and interplanetary stages, boosters, lifters, probes, satellites etc. with the means to de-orbit.

I am not 100% successful in my prevention efforts, but I have never ever come near a situation where debris threatened any of my endeavors.

Caught a piece of debris in a highly eccentric orbit once to prove that I could, but otherwise I leave them be.

Edited March 18, 2014 by OrtwinS

[Kasuha]

Combination here. On "serious" mission I usually design to not leave any debris, but when I really have to, I destroy it from tracking station. And when doing experiments I don't care and destroy everything anyway.

[kifli]

when I start playing ksp I tried my best to no let debris but then I understood that chances of hitting one are extremely low . and even if debris start to be a problem it can be easily removed from ksc. if yo have the tools why not use them ?

[KerbMav]

Actually rigging everything with explosives would get you to Kessler the fastest - in reality at least.

I usually try to leave the last stage in a suborbital trajectory and finish orbit with whatever comes next.

Orbits crossing the atmosphere get deleted manually, as these debris parts would go down after a while in reality.

If the last stage is till to well fueled to waste and it is a mission leaving Kerbin, the debris gets either targeted at a moon or is left in a Kerbol orbit.

In one save I specifically tried to litter my orbit as much as possible and I am still notorious for leaving landers behind in orbit above the planet/moon I visited with them.

Performanceloss will let me delete stuff time and again though.

Edited March 17, 2014 by KerbMav

[WaveFunctionP]

I'll drop a lower stage sub orbital if I can afford to. I deorbit most things that I can when I'm done with them. I also keep my debris slider low, at like 25. I'll also recover/terminate when I feel like doing a little house cleaning.

Basicly, I try to be realistic about it, but I'm not super serious with it. I do it when it makes the game more fun for me to do so.

I have a similar philosophy about satellite constellations. I'll launch and setup their obits fairly well, but I'll hyperedit to simulate automated corrections onboard the crafts.

[Polstar]

I kind of do and don't... if its small like a nose cone or smallish tanks then its a case of if it drops back down all well and good otherwise it gets left. Some larger stuff like my orange refuel tanks will get a de-orbit burn, don't want them too close to the space station. Some old space stations, interplanetary modules, old bases and rovers just get a change of icon to debris and forgotten about.

[possum]

I try to leave as little debris as possible. As I get closer to the debris limit I will remove smaller things like fairings. After the arm update I plan to build a station with a clean up craft stationed there.

[pauix]

Most of my booster stages never make it to orbit, and the few that make it are normally destroyed from the tracking station. However, whenever I learn how to pull out a rendez-vous without hours of goofing around and the Claw comes out, I'll try to take out the trash manually.

[biohazard15]

My upper stages usually feature some sort of deorbiting mechanism. If deorbiting can't be done, I try to eject it at "graveyard orbit".

Removing debris through tracking station is fair only when it's periapsis is in atmosphere.

[NASAFanboy]

Last time I attempted to clean up a large empty booster stage, I ended up getting rid of one debris piece than creating three more from the spent stages in orbit.

[Cerberus738]

My first game i had debris on and actually ended up smashing into some garbage and destroying a mission to minmus... I actually laughed a little... since then i've taken care to leave as little as possible in space. In my current game i've had to turn debris off cause i need all the processing power i can get. If a ship crashes and ends up unflyable i just terminate it (i have a few kerbals floating around that need rescuing... ha ha ha)

[mellojoe]

I try to leave little debris. I leave the slider on full during the mission, and try to plan accordingly. But for bits and pieces that didn't get crashed (whether they survived impact, or are decouplers floating aimlessly), I'll nuke them in the tracking station. My large stages usually contain a probe core and at least 1 of the flat solar panels so that I can steer them after seperation. But if I miscalculate and don't leave enough fuel, I'll nuke from the tracking station. For me, I like the orbit lines to be uncluttered, and I'll roleplay that I've cleaned up debris, but I just don't have time to do it in real life.

[dragoncannon]

I try to keep LKO as clean as possible. Depending on the mission profile, I either attempt to deorbit spent stages or leave them in disposal orbits (>500km) that are unlikely to interfere with future missions. I have no problem leaving debris in a solar orbit, however. When dV is tight (for example, a Moho mission), I am less concerned with the location of my debris and more concerned with maximizing my efficiency.

[Starwhip]

I both design for minimal debris, as well as shoot down with MISSILES anything I catch too close to my ships.

[Brapness]

Usually I just turn down the debris slider to try and eke just a little more performance from my laptop. When I first started I had debris on for a while, and while collisions and near misses are extremely rare, if you have a particular orbit you use a lot (in my case around 105km) the chances do increase substantially. Once whilst I was launching a refuelling pod, a staging mishap caused it to break up as it approached apoapsis on a ballistic arc. I was surprised when a purple marker flicked across my screen. My space station, with 4 kerbals on board had passed within 200m of the debris with a relative speed of 1km/s. Needless to say I was somewhat relieved it was okay.

[oggylt]

leave as much as possible :>

[Zad Fnark]

I try to keep things tidy(ish). SOP for me is to put a cluster of Seperatons on an engine/fuel assembly I know I'll be jettisoning while in orbit.

ZF-

[ddavis425]

There's really no need to do anything with the debris you have in orbit. The only reason that it is a slight problem in real life is because there are thousands of pieces of debris in orbit just around Earth. Unless you are deliberately launching ships with nothing but a bunch of debris to put in orbit, you won't have near enough for it to be a real concern. The only reason you might want to limit yourself is if you have a low end computer that can't handle too much stuff in the game.

[Madrias]

I've designed ships for debris removal cause I leave the debris slider way up there.

[DisarmingBaton5]

I enjoy leaving debris. It's fun to launch to parking orbit only to realize I have parked 10km from a spent stage of [Mission]

[LethalDose]

I try to keep things tidy(ish). SOP for me is to put a cluster of Seperatons on an engine/fuel assembly I know I'll be jettisoning while in orbit.

ZF-

I have a pretty similar play style: I try to put seperatrons on launch and injection stages. Some crap gets left to float in orbit, but I try to keep it to a minimum.

It would be nice to have a "terminate/recover all debris" button in the tracking station, though.