Best way to get debris out of orbit?

[Cswartz9]

I\'m relatively new to KSP, and I\'ve recently taken a short break from my unsuccessful trips to the Mun to get a few basic ships into orbit around Kerbin. The problem is, my design ends up splitting stages right as I get into a sustained orbit, and as of now I\'ve got several pieces of debris in a perfect orbit only 10 meters or so below my craft\'s orbit. I was wondering if there are any ways to get this debris out of orbit; I\'ve tried sending a really basic craft full of flammable items into space while the debris is directly overhead, but it\'s EXTREMELY difficult to crash into the debris that only consists of a fuel pod and a liquid engine.

[Mogadishu]

Double click on the engine while flying another ship (in map mode) and click 'End Flight'. This will remove the debris.

[Cswartz9]

So there\'s no easy way to get rid of the debris while keeping the ship that released it in orbit? Or am I just reading this wrong?

[sal_vager]

There are a bunch of ways, none are really simple though.

One way is to edit your persistence file to remove them, it should be in KSP\saves\default but back up first as some editors can ruin the file.

Another way is to use [ and ] to cycle through parts in orbit, and end the flight of the debris.

Or you could try making a ship that can grab the debris and slow it down so it crashes into Kerbin.

If the debris has a periapsis of around 20k or less you can watch it so it drops out of the sky, otherwise it\'ll just keep orbiting.

Proper debris handling may come later but it\'s not a priority I think.

[Mogadishu]

So there\'s no easy way to get rid of the debris while keeping the ship that released it in orbit? Or am I just reading this wrong?

No, the ship stays, just the peice of debris you\'re 'Flying' will dissapear.

[mrpieface2]

Yeah there\'s no easy way. Sorry

[Zephram Kerman]

Well there is that setting 'max persistent debris' or whatever. Slide that down to the minimum to delete most of the orbital junk indiscriminately.

For the future, it is possible to design your ships so that the various stages fall back to Kerbin, hit Mun, or escape the Kerbol system. A variation on this is to naughtily skip Kerbin orbit and immediately go to Mun at about a 45 degree angle; there is small a fuel penalty for this, but the periapsis is within the atmosphere.

[H3LLscythe]

I'm just a humble village idiot, but if it is classified as bebris you should be able to go to the tracking centre, press the debris button on the top of the screen, and you should see all the debris orbiting the planet. then you just click on the debris you want to end, and click end flight. it shouldnt end the still working ship, only the debris.

[Ralathon]

Like others have said you can just end flight on them. Best way I've found is to prevent it from existing in the first place.

For example, when going to the mun my mission profile looks like this:

Launch

Drop ascent stage when the periapsis of my LKO hits 10km.

Raise periapsis to 70km with transfer stage.

Burn towards the mun, make sure the orbit hits the surface or is on a free return trajectory with a kerbin periapsis below 20km.

Dump transfer stage, slight course corrections with RCS to avoid hitting the mun.

Braking burn at Mun periapsis to enter munar orbit.

All the normal things you do during landing.

When using a 2 stage lander, pump some fuel from the top stage to the bottom stage so it can lift you at least a few kilometers.

Launch back to orbit.

Transfer burn to Kerbin.

Land on kerbin.

As you can see I'm left with no debris anywhere in this profile. Everything eventually hits either Kerbin or the Mun. It takes a bit more planning but prevents Kessler Syndrome and you avoid the tedium of spamming end flight.

[annallia]

I'm just a humble village idiot, but if it is classified as bebris you should be able to go to the tracking centre, press the debris button on the top of the screen, and you should see all the debris orbiting the planet. then you just click on the debris you want to end, and click end flight. it shouldnt end the still working ship, only the debris.

Look at the date of the post above yours, its over a year old. For all we know (as I haven't been playing that long) this may not have been implemented yet.

[Kerbonautical]

Here's the short answer, If you jettisoned the debris in space you can delete it without harming any other vessels and it's as easy as hitting a button. Go to your space centre (satelite ridden place which I've forgotten the name of) and look at the tabs at the top. The far left one is a list of all the unmanned debris left in space. Highlight that and hit the red button on the screen. Rinse and repeat until they're all gone.

[Trux]

Bit of a necro post, half of the information in this thread is obsolete

[Umlüx]

i dont like the idead of simply 'deleting' debris.

i usually include a small probe body to de-orbit spent/unneeded stages.

or simply some retro firing sepratons on the lifter stage when dropping it in LKO.

[Comrade Jenkens]

This may be a necro thread but the topic is still a valid one. I try to add probe bodies or docking ports to stages that won't fall back to Kerbin.

If I've forgotten those then its possible to make a 'bucket' out of panels with landing legs to act as a lid.

I don't end flight on the debris unless its on kerbin, otherwise it feels to much like cheating and adds an extra design challenge.

[petrichorAM]

I leave it were it is personally, adds to the 'challenge' of getting a clean orbit and is somewhat realistic - there is a thick sphere of debris in orbit around the Earth from all the space travel humanity has done so far - my Kerbal space program is no different in that respect I guess lol

[Nodrokov]

end the flight in the tracking station

[blubbermonkeys]

For the large pieces of debris such as a rocket booster, I give my self a challenge to deorbit it into the atmosphere and parachute it to the surface of kerbin using KAS. Only to be recovered by the Tracking station.

It's pretty fun actually!

[H3LLscythe]

Sorry 'bout that, didn't check the date. I was actually just trying to figure out how to post, and was using this one as a test.