Dangerous Space Debris and the Implications Thereof

[Dr Mayhem22]

Why is there no random space debris, projectiles, or general dangers in interstellar travel? By this I imply, is it possible to make it so that one is having a nice interstellar journey to say, eve, and on the way there, space debris is constantly hurtling next to or at him. Could it be done so that if it comes within x proximity of your craft, all time-warp halts and you have to deal with the problem. Should you choose to ignore it, the following scenario depicts the events:

Jimmy is flying through space and wasn't paying attention. Some meteors were rushing towards his craft. Jimmy decided not to take evasive manuvers. Jimmy's craft was hit by a flaming rock. Jimmy's craft's tail section broke off. Jimmy was flying on one engine with low power. Jimmy Wasn't able to slow down in time and crash landed on Duna's surface. He is now stranded and cannot leave.

I did include something about low power in that, because in its current state, power is wierd in KSP. There is no real concern about power, especially because you can just put a solar panel or more importantly an RTG and not worry about a thing. When your power drops to zero, you're basically dead, but what about before then. I also propose the ability to route power to and from critical systems. This would make it more important to place your power generation in safe locations. It would be something like, with everything on, you can only afford X% power to engines, depending on your power grid within the ship. But if you were to lose an engine, or shut off your SAS, you would be able to route Y% power to the engines (likely over 100%, like what some space shuttles are able to do), essentially making you go faster. Or say that you don't need to go particularly fast, but your ship is very unweildy, so you take power from the engines and route it to your SAS systems.

These two suggestions would tie together to make interstellar travel in particular, but much of the game as a whole, a decent amount more immersive and a little less, "we're expecting a nice, turbulence-free, cruise at about X altitude, just sit back and enjoy the flight." I just feel like, if you have enough fuel once in space, you can make it anywhere you chose (I'm saying this in a very simplified way, I realise that you can't just have 9000 Rockomax Jumbo 64s and a 24-77 (the radial small rockomax engine) and expect to get everywhere and anywhere). Now, I wonder if this would be at all plausible ever in the future. The former portion of this would likely be far too taxing on the game if it were to use 100% accurate mechanics, so it would (if possible and if ever considered) likely have to be made so that, once the threat had been dealt with, it would be deleted from the game, as in, it wouldn't calculate the object's trajectory beyond that aformentioned X radius of the craft. What would you guys say to this? Is is remotely plausible, and would it help or hinder the game as a whole? Especially if lose conditions (on the 'already suggested' thread) are ever implemented.

Edited May 3, 2014 by Dr Mayhem22
I typo'd the title

[Sirrobert]

The devs have declared that there will be no random events in this game.

That's why.

This is a game about flying rockets. It's not a game about praying to RNGesus to please not randomly destroy your ship

[Overjay]

If you travel with Alqubierre drive - it doesnt matter. Warpdrive bends spacetime around your ship, making it to pass your ship. It's like water in river passes over the stone on the bottom. Micro-things, which are.. err.. contained?.. by water (god-Emperor, help me) go pass that rock with their carrier.

Another story with teleporting systems, or as I prefer to call them - hyperdrives. You just emerge in point of your destination. Yes, there is a danger of accidential collisions, but hey! We, KSP players DO know that space is damn BIG. And empty

Oh, you've mentioned "interplanetary" under "interstellar"? I need to go to sleep.

In my opinion, that amount of asteroids we got with 23.5 update really could be counted as random events. But on large scale

[KvickFlygarn87]

Well, there are no dangers of interstellar travel because there IS no interstellar travel

[NFUN]

There isn't much debris to run into in between stars. And anyway, if you are travelling to other stars, you would be using a mod, and should talk to the creators of it... Oh, you mean interplanetary debris (or intrastellar debris I suppose)? Like people said in the other forum, the chances of being hit by a random rock is so low as to be completely neglible. Most rocks in between planet orbits in reality would be thrown into the Sun by gravity or into a planet relatively quickly, and the only stray rocks would be comets or pretty newly ejected asteroids. And Squad doesn't want to pointlessly molest players for warping and being unable to maneuver rather than waiting 600 hours to rendezvous to Duna without warp.

..hmm, my pedantry is redundant because of Overjay. The rest of my post still stands, and I'm too lazy to remove the grammar Godwinning.

-snip-

Edited May 3, 2014 by KasperVld

[Dr Mayhem22]

I don't know what I was thinking when I typed interstellar. Yes, I meant interplanetary or intrastellar. And I didn't mean that this would be avery 5 seconds it would happen, I meant it as every once and a while on your journey to another planet this could become an issue. And if rocks in space are commonly thrown into the sun, couldn't journeys to mojo or something just have a higher probablilty of this being a thing? As in, Your proximity to the sun would adjust the probablilty of this occuring. Yo ucould use an equation like P=(D(1/T)^(T/426.08))/1000 Where D is the distance from the "sun" in meters, T is the time of the journey in days, and P is the probablilty of it occurring. This is just an example from 2 minutes of tinkering, so it is probably a bad formula, but -- ah whatever. Guess it was a bad suggestion.

Edited May 3, 2014 by Dr Mayhem22

[KvickFlygarn87]

Well, there are no dangers of interstellar travel because there IS no interstellar travel

[Sirrobert]

I don't know what I was thinking when I typed interstellar. Yes, I meant interplanetary or intrastellar. And I didn't mean that this would be avery 5 seconds it would happen, I meant it as every once and a while on your journey to another planet this could become an issue. And if rocks in space are commonly thrown into the sun, couldn't journeys to mojo or something just have a higher probablilty of this being a thing? As in, Your proximity to the sun would adjust the probablilty of this occuring. Yo ucould use an equation like P=(D(1/T)^(T/426.08))/1000 Where D is the distance from the "sun" in meters, T is the time of the journey in days, and P is the probablilty of it occurring. This is just an example from 2 minutes of tinkering, so it is probably a bad formula, but -- ah whatever. Guess it was a bad suggestion.

It's still a random thing, and the devs have still stated that there will be no random things.

Have you ever tried flying to another planet? Do you know what happends if you have to 'dodge out of the way'?

I'll tell you what happends. Your carfully finetunned encounter is now thrown out of the window, and you have to start ALL OVER AGAIN. And that's if you do it 'right', by your idea

[Kodiak42]

You do realize how unimaginably empty space is right? Really, the average human mind is psychologically incapable of fully imagining how little there is in space. You see that little dot out in the distance, no, that's a speck on the camera, the smaller one, the one that looks like a dead pixel among this star-field, that's a colored-in field representing our sphere of influence, not even our planet, just our planet's sphere of influence. Keep in mind, that's a planet's sphere of influence, which dwarfs your meteor shower to a point that is just slightly unimaginable. NASA scientists aren't so concerned with random space debris because virtually all the debris they need to worry about are the trash we leave in space, the trash from a rocket that launched from the same launchpad they're reusing right now. And KSP already has that debris.

Space isn't really random, but it's empty, very empty, I can't stress enough how unimaginably empty space is, because even if you could imagine how empty it was, there is nothing quite as empty to compare it to.

[Vonar]

Really the only thing to run into at interstellar velocities is the occasional asteroid or comet in the Oort cloud, and even they are going to be few and far between.

[brianorca]

If you don't clean up after your launches, LKO will have plenty of debris for you to dodge. But space is really big, so the chance of actually being hit is still low, even after thousands of launches. In real spaceflight, probes have flown through the thick of the asteroid belt, or through Saturn's rings, and not hit anything. Even with the thousands of launches since 1957, there have been only a handful of debris impacts large enough to destroy anything. (I count 6 on the Wiki page, not counting the two intentional weapons tests.)

[DoToH]

You can go ahead and test about random debris. Make a little satellite, launch and leave the sat in a equatorial, circular, 100 Km orbit. Launch the same sat again, leave it in a equatorial, circular, 100 Km orbit. Repeat until you crash with one of previous sats and count number of launches. Have in mind that we are restricting to the same orbital plane, eccentricity and altitude and imagine the odds of a crash without those restrictions. Now imagine the amount of debris needed in space to make those odds significant.

[Twreed87]

As has been said, the odds of ever hitting anything are so astronomically low, this game is perfectly realistic in never having to make you deal with it.

[shizophrenic]

Well, there are no dangers of interstellar travel because there IS no interstellar travel

Not so sure about it. According to NASA Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space. So we have at least one objekt traveling interstellar.

[Sirrobert]

Not so sure about it. According to NASA Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space. So we have at least one objekt traveling interstellar.

Voyager 1 has 'reached interestellar space' multiple times already

[brianorca]

Not so sure about it. According to NASA Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space. So we have at least one objekt traveling interstellar.

And the worst hazard facing Voyager 1 and 2?... old age.

[Dodgey]

And the worst hazard facing Voyager 1 and 2?... old age.

I'd say trigger happy Klingons.