What do you do with obsolete SAT'S?

[DuartePires]

Hey there, I've noticed that my carreer is getting to many Satelites and others around the orbit of kerbin and mun, and it's impossible with so many orbit lines there to navigate.. What do you do? Do you delete those sat's that no longer do anything?

Edited February 10, 2015 by DuartePires

[Alshain]

I usually build them to be capable of de-orbiting themselves. Otherwise I end up with too much clutter. I even include a parachute to recover some costs.

[Randazzo]

You can "terminate" any craft, debris, flag, or otherwise trackable object from the Tracking Station and it will be removed from the game.

[eonmoon]

include juuust enough exess delta v to deorbit, then recover them, tho recently I have taken to having my sats having a docking port built in so they can be relinked into a craft for later reuse, or returned to kerbin with another craft

[Taki117]

I leave them there. With Remote Tech anything with an antenna is good, so I just hide them when in map view.

[Sirrobert]

I just rename them to debris, so I don't see them. They are still there, I just don't need to give a crap about them anymore

[DuartePires]

By de-orbit you mean, if you a SAT on the moon you land them on the mun? Or return to kerbin? Because if returning with deadly reentry it's impºossible unless I have a heatshield for them.

[cantab]

If I don't want something around any more, I terminate it from the Tracking Station. I like to thing they have a big laser there for it.

[Sirrobert]

By de-orbit you mean, if you a SAT on the moon you land them on the mun? Or return to kerbin? Because if returning with deadly reentry it's impºossible unless I have a heatshield for them.

Usually just means let them crash

[Jovus]

If I don't want something around any more, I terminate it from the Tracking Station. I like to thing they have a big laser there for it.

My thought when terminating, especially when it comes to sats I put up for contracts, is that I'm handing off control and tracking to someone else. Alright, Kerbodyne; there's your third munar COMSat, now you're responsible for it.

[Sirrobert]

My thought when terminating, especially when it comes to sats I put up for contracts, is that I'm handing off control and tracking to someone else. Alright, Kerbodyne; there's your third munar COMSat, now you're responsible for it.

And remember, you have to walk it every day

[LordFerret]

I just de-orbit them into whatever body they're orbiting. A steep descent angle usually insures little to no debris survives... and with low gravity moons, I'll power-descent down into them. Too bad they don't leave impact craters. :/

[worir4]

Blow them up!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Usually my sats get to a planet/moon's SOI aboard a mother ship that carries a bunch of them so the remnant dV on them is usually around 1 or 2 thousand , hence they double as a probe for survey contracts. So I left them there waiting for an opportunity to use them.

Otherwise, if I don't think I'm gonna get more of those contracts or I don't want to accept them or fuel has run out, then I delete the sat from the tracking station.

[tsotha]

My thought when terminating, especially when it comes to sats I put up for contracts, is that I'm handing off control and tracking to someone else. Alright, Kerbodyne; there's your third munar COMSat, now you're responsible for it.

It's not really the same, though, because a satellite that still exists is a navigation hazard. At least in theory.

I wish there were a contract mechanism that took all the sats older than ten years and bundled them up into a deorbit contract.

[LethalDose]

I leave them there. With Remote Tech anything with an antenna is good, so I just hide them when in map view.

This is typically my solution. They're still useful if they got antennae

[Kryxal]

I've recovered a few that had bays or goo on board ... I suppose I could add a parachute too, but my satellites are light enough that the extra drag is annoying without boosting torque.

[LostOblivion]

Squad should add custom filters to the map view.

[tomf]

Recently I have started crashing my used Kerbin sass as hard as possible into the Mun, but then I am writing a mod that allows you to get science from observing the result of high velocity impacts. Going from a retrograde high kerbin orbit straight to a munar collision course produces a big bang:cool:

[Skorpychan]

After tossing them through multiple orbits in order to get the contracts with as little expense as possible?

If it's around Kerbin, I just leave them there. In future, I'm going to be including chutes and a few science modules to glean some science from wherever it ends up.

If it's around a mun without too much gravity, I'll be fitting Kethane scanners and using them for observations.

If in orbit around something not kerbin but not a low-gravity mun, it's either sticking it into orbit around one of said muns, or doing whatever science I can with it.

[LordFerret]

Recently I have started crashing my used Kerbin sass as hard as possible into the Mun, but then I am writing a mod that allows you to get science from observing the result of high velocity impacts. Going from a retrograde high kerbin orbit straight to a munar collision course produces a big bang:cool:

Just for Mun impacts? I think a nice Science mod would be for asteroid impacts, like a Deep Impact project with impactor and monitoring equipment.

[WuphonsReach]

We really need:

- Satellite contracts that require controls to be idle for 30/60/90/180 days, not just 10 seconds.

- More vessel categories. In particular, we need "Communications", "Large Station", "Large Base", and maybe 1-2 others. That would improve filtering.

(I use Remote Tech, so anything with an antenna gets stuffed into a suitable orbit after use to cover any holes in satellite coverage.)

[tomf]

Any atmosphereless celestial body, but I'll think about how to include asteroids. Colliding with one at high speed might be incredibly difficult though.

[PlonioFludrasco]

The kraken ate mines.

Seriously, after all the grinding with sats, there were so many things in orbit that once the game crashed and didn't save them to the persistent.

That makes me think that growing a space kraken IRL could prevent lot of troubles!!

[John FX]

I usually build them to be capable of de-orbiting themselves. Otherwise I end up with too much clutter. I even include a parachute to recover some costs.

Yeah, this. I don't make sats with only one use or fuel levels that leave them empty afterwards. Sometimes they have enough fuel to get back to kerbin and i recover funds.

It's a little cheaty but I've noticed the recovery mod lets me recover unmanned craft that would not make it through reentry if they were the focus (DRE).

This saves on heatshields and fairings too.