Reactordrone

Had to put a probe with a Gravioli detector in a stationary orbit above the Sun with line of sight on a certain spot, not massively difficult but very time consuming with hour long burns of the Ion drive and over 14,500m/s delta V on the probe.

After I'd collected a few in orbit that had thermometers I started using them to collect in flight and surface temp observations from Minmus. More lately I've put chutes on most of them and returned them to Kerbin apart from one that I sent to Duna to complete the Duna/ike exploration missions after it had completed its mun orbits.

The LV-1 or the LV-1R? The radial engine is the LV-1R.

I don't bother putting RCS tanks on orbital taxis since there's enough in the pod for multiple dockings so i find it nice and handy.

The only thing I don't like are surface science contracts on Kerbin. In a world where, at the push of a button, a recovery team can return a spacecraft from anywhere on the planet for a fraction of the cost of the returned hardware, why would you get the people in the space program to go and get soil samples.

Went out sightseeing in a Ravenspear.

+360° E notation is correct for non Earth(Kerbin) bodies.

Keyboard and mouse.

You could find out the air pressure at the altitude you want to fly at and set the pressure switch on the chute to activate only at a higher pressure than that. Just tested and you have to be above 4000m since the chutes pressure can only be set to a maximum of 0.5 but it's do-able, just needs a lot of circling around until the probe lands. Interestingly the chute doesn't disappear after landing so you need to listen for the splash.

Launched a small satellite to the Mun for a contract and then noticed that duna was in about the right position for a transfer so I sent the satellite there as well and completed the explore Ike and Duna contracts. Got my money's worth out of that one

If you dock another module to it that has solar panels the contract should complete.

For a Kerbin one you could get most of the crew capability with 1 man escape pods and place it in the orbit where kerbin rescue contracts generate. At least that way you'll eventually make back your cost from rescue contracts. The other way is to wait until you have multiple station contracts and then launch a station that meets all of the requirements and move it from place to place. I've used one station to do a solar orbit, Ike orbit and Duna lander (as well as picking up an Ike satellite contract on the way). Here's a 10 person station core I flew the other day. Barley touched the fuel in the station's tanks to get into orbit and could have recovered the second stage if I'd added parachutes. Netted me 20,000 profit for that contract.

You can't be in orbit, you need to be out of the atmosphere withing the altitude bracket then stage the engine. You can also right click the engine and see if it has a run test option. If you had an LV-909 in orbit you could drop you periapsis into the atmosphere to create the sub-orbital condition.

Wouldn't that make them even cheaper?

Seizmic survey contracts will be ground only and you should be getting them once you unlock the accelerometer in the tech tree.

The same as what? AN and DN always have the same number, one positive, one negative.

The big reaction wheel is always a good idea. I forgot one on my last asteroid mission and chewed through 96% of my RCS aligning for burns with a class B.

Or with a planet with an atmosphere you can bring the periapsis into the atmosphere and aerobrake your apoapsis back down before circularizing into the final orbit.

There should be a survey marker that the contract adds to the map that shows the location once you get to Ike.

Yeah, I've only done it once and I've only had docking problems once

Also check that you don't have multiple docking ports trying to share the same space. It can happen if you built with multi part symmetry on and didn't quite centre the part.

I ended up 5709 funds less than what I started with which matches the cost of the parts dropped off within the KSC biome.

Quite sure. It dropped off the rover cleanly and was just sitting there on the runway and the grass. The tank, engine and decoupler that was dropped in the shores biome was available for debris recovery, the stuff in the KSC biome was deleted and the funds for those items weren't recovered.

I just ran a test where I dropped a couple of tanks and engines on the runway and KSC biomes and one piece on the shores biome and it looks like any debris that lands at KSC gets automatically deleted with no funds recovery. Added- just to be clear I never got more than 2km from the parts and they were still showing up as debris markers when I drove the rover back onto the runway.

If it's a survey mission the place name might not refer to a biome but there should be a marker on the map to show where you need to be to complete the contract.