Do you play with debris or not?

[Wabbit]

Actually I use stage recovery so whenever I'm in sandbix and don't care about reusability, it just spams my notifications with stage destroyed.

[Redhaze]

I have strict no-debris rules. It does help that most of what I launch goes on top of SSTOs, but it also applies to interplanetary stages and such. I'm no random lowlife litterer! I even lithobrake nuclear engines into people's backyards so they don't litter Kerbin orbit...

...Wait. that doesn't sound right.

Anyway, the only exception I make for leaving debris around is unplanned flight plan changes. ...small accidents, really. ...Just nuclear meltdowns, vehicular collisions and such. Completely harmless!

[Thomas988]

For along time I used to obsess about deleting all debris in the Tracking Station, but lately I really have not cared at all. For me being hit by debris is pretty much impossible (famous last words, amirite?), so I don't sweat it.

Of course that doesn't mean I'm against deleting debris, I just don't do it often anymore.

[forenci]

I use stage recovery to grab any SRBs and first core stages. I am starting to think about recovering my second stages in a Space X type way. The main issue being that with deadly re-entry this tends to be quite the challenge (depending on where the stage is returning from as it requires quite a bit of fuel to do this, plus the whole burning up thing). I may start to see if I can put an inflatable heat shield on the top of the second stage and let it go nose first through the atmosphere. I'm pretty big on recovery of parts, mainly because I like to pinch and save early in career mode in order to get buildings upgraded.

[gazzareth]

In career mode I use stage recovery and terminate anything that doesn't deorbit. Just started a science mode game though and I am a complete litter bug in that.....

G

[quasarrgames]

I use SSTOs so frequently (almost every launch) that i almost never have debris. Maybe 1 or 2 pieces, but that's it. Not exaggerating.

I kind of yearn to experience kestrel syndrome. I'm considering deliberately blowing up some ships in orbit just to create debris.

> : )

[John FX]

I used to play with unlimited debris until I tried once to artificially engineer a space collision like in Gravity. I sent up so many 'Kessler Bombs' that the game slowed to a crawl and the entire of LKO was a solid white circle of orbits.

I built a large station and put it right in the middle of the orbits and waited. And waited. Stuff would fly by and be close but after waiting a long while with debris flying by on pro and retrograde and polar orbits there was not a single collision so I figured that debris was a gameplay rather than safety issue.

Now I play with default debris settings and as said above I design my craft to just not leave any. I even put little deorbit pods (small battery, torque generator, oscar and ant) onto my drop tanks to return them to the nearest planetary body.

Like this.

There is a battery, probe core and torque ring clipped into the top section. When dropped it has about 650Dv, enough to deorbit from most situations.

[Spatzimaus]

I just don't create debris in the first place. Once I'm past the first couple launches, all of my designs are SSTO, and those first few launches are specifically designed to not create debris either in orbit OR at low altitude (where it might survive landing). Even my heaviest rockets (~20,000 tons) are single-stage, complete with full sets of parachutes and landing girders. Besides, once you unlock all of the essential bits for spaceplanes it's just more cost-effective to use them wherever possible (and "possible" can get pretty large, too).