[0.14] The Kessler Shotgun and the Supercollider

[gabyalufix]

So I designed a pair of craft that are literally accidents waiting to happen. The idea was to fill space with junk, then 'accidentally' impact one, without intentionally setting up an intercept. I\'ve yet to see it happen, but not for lack of trying. Here is the basis of my efforts:

The first ship is the Kessler Shotgun, which launches 192 radial decouplers into LEO. It does NOT mess around. Bottom stage uses vanilla-balanced engines, and my novapunch-balanced fuel tanks. Top stage is pure novapunch. It also has a ton of spare RCS fuel and rockets, so that you can spin it up before you start releasing the decouplers.

The second ship is designed purely to have a large cross section, around 25 meters in diameter. This should maximize the chance of 'accidental' impact. I was lazy with this one, so i snapped the silisko-edition-balanced engines onto the novapunch-balanced fuel tanks, which is massively unbalanced in combination. But whatever. Any fair launcher will lag too much to fly once you have all that debris in orbit hogging all your clock cycles.

Both require only 0.14x4, Novapunch, and my miscellania. Happy widowmaking!

edit: my estimates indicate that the shotgun places (very) approximately 1 decoupler in every 350-meter square, within an approximate 5km by 5km 'danger zone'. The danger zone shifts shape, depending on where in the orbit you are, relative to the original release point. So the probability of impact is relatively low in each pass. But eventually . . .

edit: Brain fart. Forgot to attach the ships!

[Tim_Barrett]

Mother of god...

That second one - multiplayer simulator. Intense trolling will ensue when you deploy that thing in the opposite direction of a huge space station...

[gabyalufix]

The first one is the offensively dangerous one. Attaining an intercept course with a counter-orbiting space station with a single ship, even a huge one, would require perhaps-impossibly-exact orbital navigation. But with the shotgun, you could create a shotgun zone counter-orbiting a space station. Mwa ha ha.

Edit: Did the math. Assuming you put the shotgun and collider in opposing orbits, then your chances of achieving an impact is around 0.005 with each pass. With that math, you have a 50-50 chance of surviving ~135 passes without impact. All very approximate.

Also, since everything is on rails in 5x dilation and beyond, you\'d have to run it at 2x in order for an impact to happen. Boring. Better launch a bunch.

[Braun]

It\'s blotting out the sun! Oo

[Kosmo-not]

I want to see a screenshot of the map with all the debris it makes.

[Shiar]

What is the mod that puts the wee waypoint in?

[gabyalufix]

Shiar: If I understand what you mean, then you just need to buy the full version.

Kosmo: It looks a little something like this:

[mincespy]

[Nooblet68]

Seriously, you\'d be a total arsehole to use that on someone else\'s \'persistence save\'.

[Damonjay]

How is your computer not going at a complete Crawl?

Also you should try cleaning that up

[Shiar]

Shiar: If I understand what you mean, then you just need to buy the full version.

And now all is clear to me. I hadn\'t upgraded at the time of my post. :3

[Douglasdtlltd]

Kosmo: It looks a little something like this:

Dear god man. Why.

[Robo336]

Dear god man. Why.

Do you really need an answer?

[Kryten]

Kosmo: It looks a little something like this:

...Could we have a .sfs? I want to try launching through that.

[gabyalufix]

Ergh. I accidentally added too many without backing up the sfs first. Now whenever I try to load, it just freezes up on launch. I\'ll have to start over.

Also, it\'s not even that dangerous. low Kerbin orbit actually has enormous volume, so even with a thousand bits of shrapnel the actual debris density is tiny.