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Sure, that's an unmanned probe


Kerano

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Trouble satisfying contract requirements in your rover?

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No problem, just step outside a moment...

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Now that's a well paid EVA. :P

(About your "satellite" though, guys... I think it's getting itchy feet...)

Edited by Kerano
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On 9/29/2016 at 2:55 AM, monstah said:

Looks like a friggin nuclear reactor down there :0.0:

Haha, I probably could have toned down the self-lighting. Makes it look cool though, especially against the backdrop of Duna. (Panels are retracted in this one for atmospheric reentry.)

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I probably overdid it on the parachutes though. Takes ages to repack them all! :P Makes for a soft landing at least.

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11 hours ago, monophonic said:

Let me guess: you sent the poor thing out with "record everything" as its only mission, some mechanoid race found it and better equipped it to actually record everything.

Haha, pretty much. Main design goal was to try using the Poodle engine, which I've never given much love before. Turned into a quest to see how much ore I could retrieve from the Mun in one go. (195 tonnes of ore in one go incidentally, doubling the wet weight of the craft - with about 700 m/s delta v, easily enough to get to Munar orbit. Allowing time for the ore conversion it caps out at well over 4000 m/s delta v.)

The Duna variant is adjusted slightly (4 ore tanks -> 4 fuel tanks) so it has enough delta-v to get to Duna orbit. Can only half fill the ore canisters when flying up from Duna, the full load is no problem from Ike though. Wide base keeps it stable landing on most surfaces.

Carries 29 crew, handy for tourists - can easily be adjusted for more. My entire space program is on that one mission to Duna - I like to play it risky. :P

Incidentally the rover itself has enough delta-v to get to Munar orbit on its own. (It can also reattach to the main craft.) Super fun to play with, many stunts around crater walls.

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At launch.

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Entirely stock. Can upload the craft file if people are interested.

Edited by Kerano
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It`s fixable.

There could be a check on launch for `manned` or `unmanned` which persists connected to the probe core you are trying to complete the mission with. If any cores on the craft were `manned `at launch then no contract completion for you.

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10 minutes ago, John FX said:

It`s fixable.

There could be a check on launch for `manned` or `unmanned` which persists connected to the probe core you are trying to complete the mission with. If any cores on the craft were `manned `at launch then no contract completion for you.

Honestly, there are a LOT of things that could probably be handled like this.  It's just way too easy to complete certain missions with craft that weren't designed for those particulars.

Outpost missions?  Land a larger rocket with a lander can, some wheels stuck to the side, etc.  During the time it's sitting on the surface, the game counts it as a base, so as long as it's got all the bells and whistles it'll complete the contract.

Science missions?  Unmanned tiny lander with a thermometer, or an orbiting one with a grav sensor, can repeat these as necessary, and they'll pay for themselves after a few iterations for the nearby bodies and a single mission for the further stuff.  They also work well as comm links to KSC, if you give them a decent antenna.

Heck, I got my 1.2 career going by accepting six "recover a kerbonaut in low Mun orbit" missions at once, sending a single rocket with an Apollo capsule and lander can (all empty except the pilot), and recovering them all at once.  The cash payout was insane, and set me up to send unmanned probes to every body in the system.  While this does fit within the letter of the contracts, it probably wasn't intended when they decided the payouts (most of which would otherwise have gone to pay overhead on six separate launches).

The problem with your suggested fix, though, is that many unmanned probes in KSP were initially attached to a manned vessel.  It's cheaper to stick a 2-ton ion probe on the side of a 120-ton booster while it's busy launching your manned Mun landers than it is to launch the probe on its own dedicated rocket.  Should it be disqualified because, at launch, it was part of a "manned" vessel?  No matter how you parse it, there'd be abuses, and this is a single-player game with cheat options so it's not like people couldn't control the situation for themselves.  Best to just let it go.

 

Besides, half the fun of KSP is overengineering things, so it's not like people will cut corners that often just for the sake of completing one extra mission.  I mean, back in 0.90 I launched this monstrosity, dubbed Mun Unit Zappa:

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When you're landing a 600-ton rover on Mun, launched by a ridiculously massive (~11 kton) SSTO booster "brick" setup, cost is not really a concern any more.  There are no contracts requiring a rover that huge, when the dinky 25-ton rover in the foreground can serve just as well, but where's the fun in limiting yourself?

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