Orbital debris

[Johnny Wishbone]

Ok, so I completely missed this thread when I just posted a poll on the exact same subject. My bad. Not trying to hijack or anything like that.

Mods feel free to wipe out my poll. Again, apologies. I need to do a better look over topics before posting.

[phunk]

1 and 2.

I try to design my launches so debris is all dropped before the last bit of circularization, but don't worry about it too much when I have do something like drop a transfer stage on the way to another planet/moon.

[Red Iron Crown]

Ok, so I completely missed this thread when I just posted a poll on the exact same subject. My bad. Not trying to hijack or anything like that.

Mods feel free to wipe out my poll. Again, apologies. I need to do a better look over topics before posting.

Merged for you.

[katateochi]

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

I used to be militant about not allowing any debris to be left in any orbit. So in 0.90 I thought I'd go the other extreme and have an intentionally messy orbit

So that's been quite liberating and made me realize that designing for a clean orbit was actually quite a bit of work, much easier without, but equally its a fun challenge to do too.

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

I've also wondered about doing this. Not really for the $$ but more because designing a space fairing dust-truck that can pick up multiple things of various shape/sizes is an interesting design challenge.

[Torquemadus]

I tend to generate some debris in very early career, when mass and part counts are very limited. I usually allow these spent stages to remain as "historic" debris, acting as memorials to my early spaceflights.

I also tend to leave satellites in position after contract completion, unless I decide to re-task them. All are capable of parachute recovery if I wish to do so. However, I like the idea of space around Kerbin being busy with "traffic". It adds a touch of realism.

[problemecium]

You forgot the fourth option: "What space junk? I never leave ANYTHING up there that isn't part of an important ongoing mission."

[Alshain]

I usually leave it. I want to point out the "My CPU can handle it" is a misleading line, most CPU's could handle it because they get unloaded and go on rails. It doesn't take much CPU to do that, you would need a lot to overload any modern CPU.

[merendel]

All my launchers are designed to either leave stages on a suborbital trajectory for lower stages or are designed to be recovered eventually for the upper ones. I'll sometimes crash spare fuel pods into other planets after a transfer or leave them in orbit with docking ports as a mini refueling depot if they still have fuel in them. Prety much all my debris are the remains of ships I crashed somewhere. Sometimes I sweep them up for refurbishment with interplanetary launchpads but mostly I leave them for historical reasons.

[Aragosnat]

Need another option... Intentionally have debries de-orbit on its own without need of probes or pilots to help push it down. But, yeah. I try not to use the teminate button. Only time is when the object should have de-orbited on its own. But, due to how KSP works. Sometimes that does not happen as the object is to high up to be terminated by the game.

[bdito]

I design my crafts to drop the last launch stage as my periapsis is around 0-20,000m, then use my next stage to finish the circularization burn. If I want to get rid of something I just delete it. I could very easily grab it and deorbit it but that's tedious and I'd rather spend my time doing more enjoyable things.

Edited January 21, 2015 by bdito

[nholzric]

I leave it - space is big and budgets are tight.

Although, for launching satellites I have been doing direct ascents allowing the boosters to fall back to Kerbin.

[Jarin]

I use StageRecovery, and I'm a tad obsessive about not wasting anything I can potentially get funds back from (I am not "good" at KSP in general, so I like a nice wide safety margin in the bank). Lift stages get a bunch of parachutes left on them and separated with a periapsis of <25km so the on-rails recovery will work. For heavier lifts where this isn't practical, or I need transfer stages, I'll often put a probe core in the detached stage and leave a bit of fuel so it can deorbit itself.

Station supply runs get turned into scrap metal with EPL.

[rynak]

I tend to not create debris that cannot deorbit itself. Even my sats that have been put into proper orbit, always have more than enough fuel to deorbit themselves.

If it happens however, i just disable it in the tracking station.

And yes, i too use a plugin to get funds for retrieving stages. I almost never plan to detach stages while in orbit - it all happens during ascent and insertion.

Edited January 21, 2015 by rynak

[SorryDave]

Some games I minimiz debris, other games I do not. I almost never use probe cores.

[ROXunreal]

I'm totally unsustainable and don't really care, CPU is not complaining as of yet. I throw my garbage anywhere I can. It would actually be kind of cool to get a debris collision witha craft or station, even if the odds are ridiculously miniscule.

Edited January 21, 2015 by ROXunreal

[samstarman5]

Those I can de-orbit, I do. Others I judge how close they may come to the atmosphere, and if it is within 72km, I give them a couple orbits and then just terminate, writing them off as destabilized orbits. If they don't come within that margin, then they stay, with a plan to retrieve them for some refunds. True, most debris won't recoup the costs of the launch of the retrieval mission alone, but it is worth it to just get the debris out of the sky if they sit in a common orbital area.

[AbacusWizard]

The way I design rockets, there are really only two possibilities for jettisoned stages:

1) If the stage is jettisoned before I achieve orbit, then the debris is on a suborbital trajectory, which will take care of itself.

2) If I achieve orbit before jettisoning the stage, then the detached part presumably still has fuel in it--in which case that's not debris; that's an orbital refueling depot for future missions to use!

[GoSlash27]

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.

^ This.

I don't leave debris in orbit. Not something I have to actively plan for, I just don't build my rockets to orbit and then stage.

Multistagers are always 3 phase with the last phase being a single stage. SSTOs (of course) return intact, leaving nothing in orbit but payload.

For contract satellites and such, I'm not above using the terminate cannon.

Best,

-Slashy

[Pecan]

Rule 1: Everything is reusable.

Rule 2: All the things that aren't reusable are recoverable.

Rule 3: Or they have probe-cores to de-orbit and destroy themselves.

Rule 4: Er, since we've already broken rules 1 and 2, all the things that aren't reusable/recoverable and don't destroy themselves must be dropped while sub-orbital so they are automatically deleted.

Rule 5: Ummm, and any other debris gets deleted in the tracking centre.

Rule 6:

.

Rule 7: Except that some things marked as 'debris' are actually monuments to earlier missions - like an Apollo-style landing-stage left on Mun.

[Greenfire32]

I primarily design my crafts in such a way that there is no debris left in space for long periods of time (sub-orbital debris/debris that crashes into the surface), but I did also have a "Sanitation tug" that I had docked on my KISS (space station) that I would periodically use to grab bits here and there and nudge them into sub-orbital trajectories.

[CptRichardson]

I typically build my ships and fly them in a way to allow the atmosphere to pull in boosters/expended stages, with only a few pieces of debris from deep space launches. I'll have to take up a nuke-driven CLAW to bring those parts back down.

[Norpo]

I just leave debris to a small-ish amount in settings, even when I kept it on near-unlimited I never had a problem with it, just saw it whipping by time to time. My CPU is strained when playing the game enough >.>

[Empiro]

"I leave as little debris as possible" should be one of the choices. I will in fact re-design huge portions of my rocket just to achieve this.

This usually means a 3-stage-to-orbit rocket. 2nd stage will get me close to orbit -- an AP of 80-90km, and a PE of -10km-10km, which means that it will get removed. Third stage circularizes and also has enough fuel for the rest of the mission, whether that's going into a specific orbit, going to the Mun or going even further.

When going to the Mun, I usually will ditch that 3rd stage on and let it crash on the Mun. When going further, I'm not hugely opposed to leaving junk in a solar orbit, but I tried to avoid it if possible to.

[leops1984]

As much as possible, I try to clean up my space debris - I will deorbit lifter stages with an attached probe, etcetera. However, I use the debris tab instead as a storage place for "decomissioned" satellites (i.e, those I have no more use for).

[Streetwind]

I make a modicum of effort to minimize debris... most of my launches don't leave anything up there. But at the same time, I don't worry too much if I happen to drop something that'll stay in orbit. My CPU can handle it.

However!

Every once in a while I will go into the tracking station, turn on the debris display and go through all of them, checking for atmosphere intersections. I will terminate anything that has a Kerbin periapsis under 70km, for example. This is just a way to simulate natural atmospheric decay, which doesn't happen in KSP.