Kesslerizer: Microdebris tracking

[LitaAlto]

I may take this on as a project later on, but if someone wants to beat me to it, knock yourself out....

The general concept is:

• If you destroy a ship in flight, its mass is added to a microdebris density count for the SOI (or possibly orbital biome?) that the ship is in.
  
• The higher the microdebris count, the more likely a random ship part will fail due to damage.
  

The idea is to encourage clean space missions, where spent ship parts are deorbited.

I'm not sure if this could use Dang It! to add the part failure functions, offhand, but it'd be nice if it could.

[ratchet freak]

maybe some density sphere "bands" there will usually be more debris in your LKO staging orbit than out by the mun

[Ippo]

I'm not sure if this could use Dang It! to add the part failure functions, offhand, but it'd be nice if it could.

We can surely work something out

[Nahim]

kinda like this?

Its an abandon mod. Shame...

[LitaAlto]

maybe some density sphere "bands" there will usually be more debris in your LKO staging orbit than out by the mun

That's kinda what I meant by "orbital biome"--and agreed, tracking microdebris density in LKO separately from HKO etc. probably makes more sense.

Of course that's not purely cut-and-dried. How do you handle the microdebris for a ship that, for example, has a Pe in LKO and an Ap in HKO? Split the difference between the two density bands based on how much of each orbit is in each band? Stick with the band the ship was destroyed in? The former might be more realistic; the latter, easier to implement.

We can surely work something out

WHEE! That'd be awesome! If nobody else beats me to this I'll be in touch. Thanks!

kinda like this?

Its an abandon mod. Shame...

Very nice visuals--but at this point at least I'm more interested in the game mechanic than the visuals.

Still, it might be worth reviewing that mod's code. Do you know which mod this was? Any source files anywhere?

[Ippo]

WHEE! That'd be awesome! If nobody else beats me to this I'll be in touch. Thanks!

Eheh, no problem In its current state there is no API for others to interact with it, but for your particular case it's just a matter of adding a couple of lines I think. Let me know when you get to implement it and we'll find a solution

[LitaAlto]

I just crunched some numbers for the volume of space for LKO versus HKO, based on the idea that we could express the chance of microdebris collision as a ratio of overall mass in grams (since even paint chips can be dangerous) to the volume for the current density band (to borrow ratchet freak's term).

Here are my current thoughts, subject to change:

• The size of each volume is so proportionally large to the volume before it that you can effectively ignore it.
  For example, the volume of Kerbin and its atmosphere is 1.44x10^15 cubic meters, while the volume of all space in Low Kerbin Orbit is 6.54x10^16 cubic meters. Subtracting the two leaves you with 6.53x10^16 cubic meters. Barely a change!
  And the difference is even more insignificant for High Kerbin Orbit. Kerbin's SoI is 2.48x10^24 cubic meters--subtracting LKO's volume from this hardly changes the number at all.
  Upshot: I probably don't need to overthink the volume used for density calculations.
  
  
• Ratios will lead to fairly small percentages. A 100 ton ship gives you 1.0x10^8 grams of microdebris. If destroyed in LKO, that gives you a microdebris density ratio of:
  1.0x10^8 / 6.54x10^15 = 1 / 6.54^10^8 ~ 1.53x10^-8 (0.0000000153)
  Upshot: I might need a scaling factor, possibly tied to difficulty. But maybe cap it since if the ratio is too high, you're probably experiencing Kessler Syndrome every flight.
  
  
• Over time, the microdebris density for LKO should decline. This should be gradual, taking years to go to zero even if there are no more destroyed rockets in that time period. HKO gets no such benefit; in the real world it can take millennia for microdebris to be perturbed enough by lunar gravity and solar wind to deorbit.
  
• Coming back to the question I posed earlier about how to treat orbits that cross more than one density band--I think I may express this as a ratio of the area of each part of the orbit. For example, if 60% of a 100 ton craft's orbit area occupies HKO, and 40% occupies LKO, then when the craft is destroyed, 60,000 grams of microdebris would wind up in HKO and 40,000 grams would wind up in LKO.
  

So that leaves me with an open question to whoever cares to answer:

If a ship is hit by microdebris, should that generate microdebris even if the ship and the impacted part is relatively intact? The original Kessler Syndrome is a cascade effect, after all....

Edited November 6, 2014 by LitaAlto

[Nahim]

Still, it might be worth reviewing that mod's code. Do you know which mod this was? Any source files anywhere?

Well, i found the original thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49420-Micrometeorites

[Xaiier]

This exists nearly to your spec in the Kessler Chaos mod. Sadly it hasn't been updated in awhile.