Sepratron I

[Pawelk198604]

I use it last stages of my boosters to bring them down to not make mess on orbit?

My mom always said to clean when you finish you job, the orbit is not different, and i don't want to delete debris via tracking station, it's little cheating in my opinion.

I just wonder how many players use Sepratron I to clear debris after launch?

[Red Iron Crown]

I just use them for clean separation of spent boosters. I keep the debris slider in the settings turned all the way down so debris is never a problem. (May possibly be considered cheaterish.)

[MK3424]

I usually add a command core and deorbit the spent stage myself when there is enough deltaV left in the tanks.

Other than that i also use the sepatrons method but have them tilted so that it will cause the spent stage to spin around it's roll axes, making it stable to do the deorbit burn by the sepatrons.

[Taki117]

While I do not use them, I don't leave debris in orbit either. What I usually end up doing is giving my lift stage just enough dV to make it to orbit, but not enough to circularizie (Usually a few hundred m/s short) then I engineer my upper stage to be able to circularize and still have enough dV to complete the mission. If I am going somewhere like the Mun or another plant and I need to drop a stage I ensure that my return vehicle has enough dV to complete the mission and then jettison the stage to ensure that it impacts the planet or moon.

[capi3101]

I've had designs that utilized all three of the previous design philosophies. My debris slider is kept to 25 (out of memory considerations - I'm playing a game with a 2 GB rig, so believe me it is an issue). Most of the time I use the same approach as MK3424 - add a probe core (the RGUs work wonderfully for this), a couple of Z-100s, and a couple of roundified RCS tanks (drained halfway) and blocks on the booster if the final stage is pretty massive. If it turns out the booster can't get the payload into orbit, I use the payload's fuel for orbital insertion and assess whether it can still do the mission at that point. I tend to overfuel my payloads so usually everything's kosher. If not, that's when I revert.

[moogoob]

If my stages can't be ejected on a collision course with something, then I do that too (add probe core, that is). IE. cruise stages to take me to the mun. Once I'm in orbit, I'll either detach and use what's left of the fuel to deorbit it, or (if landing) use that stage to start the deorbit burn (saving some of the lander's fuel).

Edited October 17, 2014 by moogoob
clarity as usual

[Norpo]

I don't really worry about debris, I don't encounter it too often, and if it starts lagging my game then i'll probably just terminate it, but, I do use sepratrons for clearing boosters away from my ship, otherwise the boosters sometimes roll into the ship and blow up a large part of the rocket, which has caused too many missions to fail, so now I ALWAYS put sepratrons on the boosters, even if I think they'll be fine.

In the past i've sometimes just slapped a few onto the command pod, if I decouple just the pod, then sometimes I can get a bit of extra Delta-V from the sepratrons by activating them after the decoupling. Sometimes all you need to get home from the mun is 100 m/s extra delta-v.

[LethalDose]

I use them to de-orbit spent stages. I usually try to stage prior to circularization, but sometimes my payload has a kicker that needs to be de-orbited from the a stable orbit.

[JtPB]

i use the speratron to clean the trajectory of my vehicle of used boosters i seprated before, cuze they're just dead mass after they burned out & when they detached they tends to flip and block my lifter

[S1gmoid]

I think it might be fun to do a spring cleaning in space once you have good enough reusable vehicles. Going around, rendezvousing with all the junk, and de-orbiting it.

[eataTREE]

That could be a new contract, even. "Too much space junk is making missions hazardous. Go clean up 15 pieces of debris."

[JtPB]

it could also be usable for landings. once the module is just a few meters before touchdown you fire them up & all the velocity that could crash your vessel is killed, that depends on that you putted parachute on your ship and it yet to reach safety speed before touching the ground...

[Frannington]

I use sepatrons to boost used stages away from my ships. Assuming a strap-on booster, I put one sepatron upside-down on the nose cone to push it diagonally away and behind. I also put one facing sideways on the body of the booster to push it away. I learned to do this after my ships got hit (and disabled) a few times by departing strap-on stages.

I also put inverted sepatrons on linear orbital stages so that they get out of my way and allow me to maneuver.

The earlier stages will of course re-enter. Most will have done on their own even without the sepatrons. But I terminate those that don't, and don't care if anyone wants to call that cheating. No one gets to tell me how to play, you see.

[Starman4308]

I think it might be fun to do a spring cleaning in space once you have good enough reusable vehicles. Going around, rendezvousing with all the junk, and de-orbiting it.

I actually did that once: built a drone with a refueling port, a claw, and an LV-N, and went around de-orbiting all sorts of junk. Less of an issue now that I'm using RSS: most of my stages wind up never getting to orbit, and my current crop of orbital rockets tend to use the last ascent stage for all their orbital maneuvers and re-entry.

[Axelord FTW]

Like someone else said, my stages meant for final orbit elevation also have a command probe core on them so I can deorbit them manually easy. A bit of RCS, one solar panel and enough parachutes are all they need.

I use Debrefund so I go out of my way to not have debris lying around.

I screwed up only twice so far in my latest career. One debris in low Kerbin orbit and more annoyingly one debris in low Eve orbit. I'm seriously contemplating a mission to EVE just to get rid of it.

[peachoftree]

I use the power of EXPLOSIONS! (check out this mod)

[SRV Ron]

I am not only using sepatrons to keep SRBs from bumping into the core of the ship, I tweak the fuel in them so they only provide just enough thrust to do the job required.

[Kar]

I use sepatrons to help detach big fuel tanks, in particular when using asparagus builds. In terms of recover I use a mod called Stage Recover due to the nature of the game. I only play career mode so I need to recover the most I can from my rockets. The only exception is if I need a extra boost for my lander, usually the last stage of my rockets have a medium rockomax tank and rockomax skiper engine for the initial boost (mum or mimnus) then the lander is fitted with nuclear engines for the rest of the trip.

[Wavechaser]

I use ullage motor... ...

[KahnRa]

I use Centripetal (Centrifugal??) force to deorbit my orbiting stages. Just start spinning end over end with your head / tail pointing at the planetary body, once you get up to maximum rotations and as the stage you want to separate gets closest to the body, separate it. The force will fling it down, and away it goes. I remember reading once that this is what they do to get rid of rubbish on the space station (it may have even been in a fiction book).

[Red Iron Crown]

I should share this extremely kerbal use of sepratrons, blowtorch staging. Made by redditor wheresmydanish inspired by a proof of concept by another redditor, captcraig.

If you look closely, the tanks are emptied bottom to top. As each one is emptied, sepatrons are fired to destroy the tank and bring the engine up for docking to the next tank. Increased efficiency through more explosions!

[Kerbezena]

On 10/18/2014 at 11:42 PM, KahnRa said:

I use Centripetal (Centrifugal??) force to deorbit my orbiting stages. Just start spinning end over end with your head / tail pointing at the planetary body, once you get up to maximum rotations and as the stage you want to separate gets closest to the body, separate it. The force will fling it down, and away it goes. I remember reading once that this is what they do to get rid of rubbish on the space station (it may have even been in a fiction book).

If they really did it exactly as you described here then it was most definitely in a fiction book.

You should rather eject the stage you want to deorbit backwards / retrograde, not downwards (radially inwards).

I recommend this great video on the topic (l among other things:

 

 

 

[Streetwind]

@Kerbezena Just FYI... you are replying to someone from six years ago...

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Kerbezena said:

If they really did it exactly as you described here then it was most definitely in a fiction book.

You should rather eject the stage you want to deorbit backwards / retrograde, not downwards (radially inwards).

Amusingly, letting go as the thing is oriented downwards IS when it's moving backwards the fastest.

[Kerbezena]

18 hours ago, Streetwind said:

@Kerbezena Just FYI... you are replying to someone from six years ago...

Yes, I'm perfectly aware of that and was when I made my reply. I'm doing so on the forum to a game that is nine years old and still played and beloved by many. This isn't some EA Sports game that becomes irrelevant after one year after all.
The fact that I found this thread in a websearch is enough evidence that other will find it too.
Why should it be better to start a new thread, instead of reviving an old one

17 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Amusingly, letting go as the thing is oriented downwards IS when it's moving backwards the fastest.

Indeed, I totally missed the point of the centripetal force. Makes sense when I think about it.

Now that I do think about it, it is the "same" technique that I employ when I want to get back from -- say -- the Mun.
I accelerate when I am in between the Mun and Kerbin (pointing retrograde with regard to my Kerbin orbit).

Thanks for enlightening me!

Edited June 29, 2020 by Kerbezena