Kessler Syndrome Creator

[Phoxtane]

A very simple challenge.

How much stuff can you put into orbit? Design a rocket that dumps as much of its pieces into orbit as possible. Try and keep them connected, so that they will split into smaller pieces when struck! Go for variety in size, from the humble RCS thruster to the mighty fuel tank!

Any add-on part is allowed, as long as it is balanced and obviously not overpowered. Bonus points if you can get screenies of your rocket being hit by some of this stuff.

My pathetic start:

One LV-T45, two fuel tanks, an ASAS, and a decoupler.

[OtherDalfite]

Yes! Go and get it!

Hah, if the site will let him.

[Phoxtane]

Hah, if the site will let him.

Seems to be working just fine for me... but back On-Topic!

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=2671.msg100852#msg100852

EDIT: 0.14 IS OUT!?

EDIT2: Saw it now. I guess I\'ll have to take a break until I\'ve finally pre-ordered... :\'(

[Alehkhs]

While you\'re busy creating space trash, I\'ll be cleaning it up with the SpaceJanitor One.

[NovaSilisko]

[707-Engineering]

i always told myself this was the first thing i would do..

nice mess up there nova !

[dodrian]

While you\'re busy creating space trash, I\'ll be cleaning it up with the SpaceJanitor One.

I love it! Especially the cage bit at the end.

[NovaSilisko]

Forgot a picture of the deployment craft

[Phoxtane]

Forgot a picture of the deployment craft -snip-

Are those... KubeSats?

[ckellingc]

While you\'re busy creating space trash, I\'ll be cleaning it up with the SpaceJanitor One.

What was that you used to close the cage? I don\'t recognise THAT part! WANT! I\'m working on a rescue vessel that will catch ships 'lost' inorbit in a similar fashion, but was having trouble keeping them in the basket.

[trbinsc]

It\'s the new animated landing leg.

[Katalliaan]

What was that you used to close the cage? I don\'t recognise THAT part! WANT! I\'m working on a rescue vessel that will catch ships 'lost' inorbit in a similar fashion, but was having trouble keeping them in the basket.

It\'s just the new lander leg part.

[707-Engineering]

Its just the first animated part, giving us vast possibilities.. ;P

[gabyalufix]

I actually started doing this the second I got .14, even before I saw this challenge. I copied over an old design I built months ago, for a different challenge.

The launch is easy, and there is tons of spare fuel, so I can do a full to-orbit launch in a few minutes. Each launch puts 101 pieces of orbital shrapnel into kerbin orbit.

The intent was to set up a complete orbital barricade. So I launched into westwards orbits, so that the more efficient eastwards orbits would be much more dangerous (since they\'d be counter-orbiting the shrapnel). Later on I plan to cover a few polar orbits as well. I always give my ship a good spin before I start releasing shrapnel, so that it spreads out better and faster.

Here is the results of one launch:

[img width=800 height=500]

http://i.imgur.com/B5Caz.png

I\'m well on my way to full orbital denial:

Already, you can\'t go into equatorial orbit without always being within a few km of some shrapnel. It ain\'t a safe place to be.

Unfortunately, real kessler syndrome is currently impossible, since when modules impact each other, they disappear instead of fragmenting into tiny bits of shrapnel.

Edit: dang. It looks like after you put a few hundred (or maybe thousand, I\'ve lost count) bits of shrapnel up, they start disappearing. Maybe a bug that\'ll get fixed later, maybe a feature to prevent too much pileup. Hard to say. It is an experimental release, after all. The disappearances appear to happen semi-randomly, but delete all objects in a large sector of the orbital sphere when it does happen.

[OtherDalfite]

Good lord Gaby. I feel sorry for the computer that has to keep up with all that. Anyways, excellent job!

[Entroper]

Edit: dang. It looks like after you put a few hundred (or maybe thousand, I\'ve lost count) bits of shrapnel up, they start disappearing. Maybe a bug that\'ll get fixed later, maybe a feature to prevent too much pileup. Hard to say. It is an experimental release, after all.

This is actually by design, to prevent KSP from grinding to a halt as you add more and more debris. You can increase the hard limit in the game settings, or turn it off completely.

[NovaSilisko]

Okay then, gaby...

[gabyalufix]

Set Max persistent debris to unlimited. It is ON.

[NovaSilisko]

First attempt couldn\'t reach orbit:

It also crashed my game.

Attempt 2:

Again, only suborbital... and nearly hit by a previous mission.

Attempt 3 - Success!

But, this is not nearly comparable to what has been done... more work is required.

[Shedao]

I had exactly the same plan as Gaby and took an old polluter rocket to get Kerbin a Saturn like ring system. (you can see it in the Multitasker challenge) but on a geostationary orbit. It is interesting to see how fast it can get dangerous in lower orbits.

[gabyalufix]

This is how the world ends.

I\'m too tired to count properly. I think that\'s ~650 independent modules, but I could be off by a launch or two. In ~75km LEO, you find you\'re always in 'sighting' range of at least a few bits of debris. Never been hit directly, yet.

[Awaras]

This is how the world ends.

I\'m too tired to count properly. I think that\'s ~650 independent modules, but I could be off by a launch or two. In ~75km LEO, you find you\'re always in 'sighting' range of at least a few bits of debris. Never been hit directly, yet.

Now start launching ships in the opposite direction and wait for the kaboom. 8)

[NovaSilisko]

I am getting into dangerous territory.

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

I am getting into dangerous territory.

[me=Flixxbeatz]walks out of KSP Forums after his rockets had been dwarfed by other people\'s creations[/me]