Orbital debris

[Delrey]

How do you guys feel about orbital debris? I just started having probe cores on my orbital injection stages to deorbit.

I have a good amount of stuff floating around already; some large stages in LoKO.

Do you just terminate them in the tracking station? Does the asteroid grabber work on these?

Del

[Frozen_Heart]

I've been adding probe cores to spent stages for quite a long while now. When I was a beginner I just threw them everywhere and really cluttered up Kerbins orbit.

[Zuqq]

I know a lot of people will spend the time to de-orbit spent stages. I personally slack, and terminate through the tracking station the majority of the time. Or I will drop the stage on a ballistic orbit before my insertion burn. Im unsure if the asteroid grabber works on them, but it should be easy enough to make a tug.

[DBT85]

I try and build vessels in such a way that parts either a) fall back to kerbin or slam into the planet I'm heading to.

[Red Iron Crown]

I just turn the debris slider way down in the settings. AintNobodyGotTimeFoDat.avi

[micha]

I design my missions to actively avoid orbital debris - probably thanks to watching Scott Manley on YouTube and his oft-stated dislike of the same.

I ditch launch stages prior to entering orbit - that way they crash back onto the planet I'm launching from. Yes, this sometimes means ditching a stage with a bit of fuel left over (argh! the waste!). Anything which does make orbit is either there to stay (ie, a station or satellite), or to eventually come back down.

Similarly for transfer stages to other moons/planets - they're either there for the entire return trip, or they get staged after an initial landing burn.

Anything which does get left over accidentally stays there as a reminder. Haven't played a single game for long enough to run into performance issues yet.

[Yukon0009]

I frequently get within 5 km of debris during a standard launch.......I wonder what that says about me.

[Cirocco]

as mentioned before in this thread: I tend to design my ships so that any spent stages are jettisoned while either still on a sub-orbital path or in such a way that they crash/stay on the target planet. Mind you, while I actively avoid spent stages in a LKO, I have for less problems with putting spent stages in a "graveyard orbit" i.e an orbit around the sun. The odds of those ever encountering anything or doing any harm are so astronomically low that I can happily ignore them.

[nadreck]

I try to recover all my larger booster stages so I design in probe cores and parachutes. When a craft that was fullfilling a satellite contract or station contract is done its job and if I seen no future use for it, I get rid of it either by crashing if possible or by removing it in the tracking station. Any flags that are not the primary biome identifier (ie contract or experience flags) get deleted from there as well. Occasionally I delete something I didn't mean to in tracking station (parked craft on Kerbin usually).

[LameLefty]

I just turn the debris slider way down in the settings. AintNobodyGotTimeFoDat.avi

Ditto. In the interest of role-playing my own game, and in attempting to reconcile my personal aesthetics of "fun" and "authenticity," I try to design my lifters to drop the first stage will still on a negative-perigee trajectory, or one with a perigee of under about 10 km. That said, the first thing I do with a new save is turn the debris slider down to 50 ... My game lags when it's tracking too many spent stages, stack separators and dead early probes/satellites.

Also, I just noticed the other day after a KSP crash-to-desktop that my Tracking Station now shows 0 debris being tracked. I don't remember setting that to zero. Must be a new glitch in my save.

[Tex]

Honestly, I haven't ever progressed enough (yet, I'm working on it) to the point where debris is a huge problem. Most of the first stages on my rocket end up suborbital anyway, and the rest of them are all one piece deals, so I'd have to launch plenty of rockets before my particular system clutters up Kerbin space just yet.

[Mr. Speed]

I never care to deorbit them after a launch, so I have a nice ring of junk around kerbin. I have had plenty of spent orbital stages zip past me during launch, but even if you pass within 2 kilometers the chance of actually hitting something is still very small. Whenever I feel like it's getting a bit too messy I launch a nuclear grabber vessel and salvage everything I can.

Everything is more fun in space. Even being a waste collector!

[boxman]

Since debris is a problem in real life i dont see the problem in having a bit of debris around. Of course if I can avoid it in a realistic manner I often do so.

But otherwise I just dont deal with it unless it becomes a problem like causing lag. Adding a probe core and thrust/rcs to everything is just not realistic imo.

Also that debris can be a nice reminder of previous missions or failures.

[Skorpychan]

I am planning to make a SSTO tank/engine grabber. Big fuel tanks and engines are expensive!

[Janos1986]

If it's small, cheap or too far away I terminate it.

As for big launch stages, I tend to make them barely unable to get to orbit so I can recover them on the ground.

[Toastedbuns]

I terminate it most of the time. No point keeping it cluttered up.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Probe cores and parachutes!

Jettison as much as you can before orbit.

Yes, grabbers work. I have special de-orbiters, that are a probecore, grabber, small engine, and parachutes.

RECOVER IT ALL!

[Itsdavyjones]

Most of my rockets leave no debris, and if i have a stage that has enough D/V to be in orbit after the final burn, I use it as much as possible before shutting it off prematurely and use the rest to get the last bit into orbit. Otherwise, i try to crash them into other bodies.

[fchurca]

I'm experimenting with SSTO lifters now. I have some legacy debris orbiting around, which I'll try to take care of with ion-powered deorbiters.

[Chewy]

I've never given much consideration to debris, other than that I try to get funds for any liquid fuel launch stages by putting parachutes on them and decoupling them prior to circularizing (those engine costs add up). Most of my persistent debris is ejected procedural fairings, even though I usually eject fairings as soon as I'm out of the atmosphere on a suborbital trajectory (because I don't want to use extra fuel to push the weight of the fairing), I use interstage fairings for rocket cargo bays often enough to clutter up the sky quite a bit.

Has anyone ever thought of making a mod that would simulate debris collisions for non-active vessels? That would make me think twice about littering LKO with abandon.

[monstah]

I try realistically to keep skies clean, but my major concern is FPS.

[TrooperCooper]

I put a stack of TNT on my lifters, countdown triggered by their decouple-stage. Less boring than deleting stuff through the tracking station. Yummy explosions.

[Itsdavyjones]

Now if only explosions made hundreds of pieces of small debris, then you would deorbit.

[Johnny Wishbone]

Career mode or sandbox, how do you manage all the debris from your space program? The spent boosters, derelict transfer stages, debris from collisions (accidental or on purpose), etc that litter the orbits around your planets and moons. Or are you space eco-friendly and clean up after yourself?

Do you:

1) Leave it there. My CPU can handle it.

2) De-orbit it for recovery or destruction using in-game resources like probe cores or piloted ships.

3) Destroy it using the tracking station's "terminate" button.

[Slam_Jones]

In my earlier KSP days, I'd leave orbit trash everywhere. One day I had a piece of debris fly past my station, no more that a few meters from hitting it and ripping it apart. Since then, I've been a bit more careful.