Debris aerobraking?

[DeepOdyssey]

Hello.

There's a thing that bugs me out. I carefully design my rockets, so the stages will burn in atmosphere. At least theoretically. But once i entered tracking station, and had chosen to view debris, only to find, that some of the debris with periapsis below 25 km, is still there!. How that can be? I checked if the debris was from the last launch, as the orbit could somehow not decay by one revolution, but, no it was from the old spacecraft, and the debris was orbiting several times around kerbin, until the moment i checked it.

So my question is: Does the debris is physically simulated while i don't view it/make it active vessel? And if it's simulated then why does aerobraking is not working?

[Specialist290]

What's going on is, when an object passes outside the physics range of your active craft (~2.3km), that object is put "on rails" and becomes a data point in a fixed orbit. Unless it either enters another body's sphere of influence, collides with the parent body, or (on planets with an atmosphere) passes below the point of 0.01 atmospheric pressure (~23.1km for Kerbin), it remains in that orbit, and no physics is simulated for that object.

[Bilfr3d]

I never even knew that... I'm going to try and make some bug ships now.

[DeepOdyssey]

Thanks. I guess i will now pay more attention to the pressure levels and altitude of different kerbol bodies.

[Kryxal]

You can terminate flight on those if you like, saying "they should be gone, so now they ARE gone", or you can fly them (more like just watch them) until the periapsis drops enough or they crash, but be prepared to be unable to look away from those.

[Claw]

You can terminate flight on those if you like, saying "they should be gone, so now they ARE gone".

Yeah, this is what I do over time. Every so often when I'm in the tracking center, I manually "deorbit" any debris on a (what should be) decaying orbit.

I've followed enough debris around the planet/atmosphere to know what happens, but some people still like to watch it come down.

[Roastduck]

Every so often when I'm in the tracking center, I manually "deorbit" any debris on a (what should be) decaying orbit.

I just like to mentally add a bit of extra flavor to to the kerbals. They have one small section of engineers at KSP who are actually exceedingly competent at their jobs who specialize in knocking out space debris with kinetic kill vehicles. They just keep to themselves and let the other engineers flounder, because they just have such a great attitude about everything and they don't want to ruin it for them

[WeirdCulture]

you can "deorbit" them from the tracking station, or just watch them aerobrake... second option takes more time

[Soda Popinski]

you can "deorbit" them from the tracking station, or just watch them aerobrake... second option takes more time

But the second option is so much more satisfying. Helps to run deadly re-entry.

[Mitchz95]

Sometimes I find debris with 18km periapsis' still in orbit after being dumped years ago.

[James_Eh]

I've followed enough debris around the planet/atmosphere to know what happens, but some people still like to watch it come down.

Count me in here. I like to picture myself as a Kerbal land developer, wondering how in the name of all that is sane that jerk of a real estate dude talked me into buying land within a couple of degrees of the equator on Kerbin.

"NO! NO! My ski resort in the mountains!!! Obliterated by 20 large 1st stage lifter tanks and engines!!! Curse you KSP! (But go Jeb!)"

[Claw]

Sometimes I find debris with 18km periapsis' still in orbit after being dumped years ago.

This shouldn't happen with stock KSP around Kerbin, because anything below roughly 23km and out of physics range gets deleted. (Unless you are using mods or are talking about somewhere besides Kerbin orbit.)

[Pecan]

I just like to mentally add a bit of extra flavor to to the kerbals. They have one small section of engineers at KSP who are actually exceedingly competent at their jobs who specialize in knocking out space debris with kinetic kill vehicles. They just keep to themselves and let the other engineers flounder, because they just have such a great attitude about everything and they don't want to ruin it for them

:-) Dead Letter Office

[cantab]

Count me in here. I like to picture myself as a Kerbal land developer, wondering how in the name of all that is sane that jerk of a real estate dude talked me into buying land within a couple of degrees of the equator on Kerbin.

"NO! NO! My ski resort in the mountains!!! Obliterated by 20 large 1st stage lifter tanks and engines!!! Curse you KSP! (But go Jeb!)"

The real question is why you bought land in the equator for a SKI resort