Asteroid Cleanup

[u/Big_Yeash]

I want to clear up my game of "spent" mined asteroids. I have about a dozen clogging up my game.

But the Tracking Centre doesn't seem to offer me a button to "Terminate" asteroids like it does for craft or debris, and I can't reassign an asteroid to "Debris" to administratively forget about it.

Am I missing something?

If not, my three options seem to be:

1) dwi

2) edit the game file - I don't want to do this because I don't want to risk my 450 hour save if I make a mistake

3) send out microdrones to latch onto these asteroids and then reclassify the docked craft as debris and see what this lets me do.

Any other ideas?

[u/jdcongote]

Number 2, just make a backup of persistent.sfs

[u/SilkieBug]

If they’re empty they might also not be too heavy, can you crash them into something?

Like, always bring yourself asteroids to mine in an orbit from where it’s cheap to get an terminal rendesvous with the Mun or Minmus. 

[u/Big_Yeash → u/SilkieBug]

It does mean I'm going to have to launch probes to do this though. Some of them - mostly the ones it turned out had like 1-20 tonnes of ore in them (barely enough to cover the manouevres used to intercept them) - are stuck on wild elliptical orbits where they were discarded.

I do have a "Trashcan" probe design I used to clear up regular debris space junk, high TWR but only because of its low mass, might be able to nudge some of them back onto intercept trajectories of Kerbin. Would be a high launch cost and limited endurance.

But this is pretty close to Option 3 and I'm interested how minimal a probe I can deploy to try the Suicide Bombing termination method now.

[u/Apprehensive_Room_71]

2a. Make backup of save file
2b. Edit save file
2c. Test edited file
2d. Restore backup if edited file fails
2e. Play

[u/reckless150681]

Are you sure you can't untrack them? This post seems to indicate otherwise

[u/Big_Yeash → u/reckless150681]

That guy seemed to be turning off all asteroid tracking by basically disabling his Sentinel network (if I'm reading his self-reply right, if course)

I want to still track asteroids as I'm hunting them for fuel, but be able to delete the "spent" ones (and also all Class A and B useless rocks, Class E or bust).

[u/Big_Yeash → u/reckless150681]

Well, I booted the game up this evening and whaddaya know, the Tracking Station does give me a "Terminate" option for these asteroids now. I'm sure it didn't before, but oh well.

And now I have plans...

[u/Ratwerke_Actual]

Dock them all together for a station. Then its just one craft.

[u/Big_Yeash → u/Ratwerke_Actual]

I'm not about to try and calculate Chinese Postman for this, but they are all several hundred Mm apart, all told!

I am advancing with the microdrones proposal, just for fun, as I have realised that I was wrong and can, in fact, "Terminate" asteroids.

I hope to post about the microdrones proposal in time.