Your Weirdest Contracts

[FleetAdmiralJ]

I don't know about weird, but the best contract I ever saw was on one of my twitch streams:

It was to test the ion engine in Jool's atmosphere at an altitude between 22.6km and 24.9km and going between 100 m/s and 300 m/s.

I mean...that is wrong is just about every way possible lol.

Edit: here is the screenshot

Edited March 4, 2015 by FleetAdmiralJ

[Owen5595]

Honestly, I just got the jet-engined-on-the-mun contract, SQUAD really needs to improve contract selection

[cantab]

I've opined before that jets in space are a reasonable test. Sure, *you* know they won't work, but the Kerbals don't know that!

Also, another way to headcanon it, and many of the other strange tests, is that you aren't testing whether they work in space so much as testing whether the environment of space has done any damage. Sure you aren't going to use landing gear on a Kerbin escape trajectory, but you might use them on a spaceplane that's flying from Kerbin to Laythe and you don't want them breaking on the journey.

[AbacusWizard]

That makes a lot of sense. Sure, obviously they're not going to work due to the lack of oxygen, but perhaps what we simply see as "Run Test" in the right-click menu translates in-game to more detailed investigation of exactly what else doesn't work in that situation and why.

It's a little like, say, running accelerometer tests from a parked plane in various biomes on Kerbin's surface. We already know what the accelerometer's display is going to be, but in-game the little green scientists are presumably getting more detailed information than what we're seeing; we just simplify all of that to "science points."

[Arugela]

With the state fair coming up, one of the higher ups wives decided to send a rocket through the atmosphere to cook it as required by her grandmothers special recipe. At some point during flight a hiccup occurred in flight computer and it is now escaping Kerbal orbit. We need you to intercept return the pie before the fair! We know you can do it!

Reward: Free slice of out of this world pie! 8p

[DMSP]

I tend to send useless ComSats on random trajectories, so if a garbage contract like the "Wheels in Space" comes up, I just strap some stuff in a probe and send it into deep space

[Mahnarch]

I've opined before that jets in space are a reasonable test. Sure, *you* know they won't work, but the Kerbals don't know that!

Also, another way to headcanon it, and many of the other strange tests, is that you aren't testing whether they work in space so much as testing whether the environment of space has done any damage. Sure you aren't going to use landing gear on a Kerbin escape trajectory, but you might use them on a spaceplane that's flying from Kerbin to Laythe and you don't want them breaking on the journey.

I like this explanation.

We KNOW that a jet engine won't work in space, but the scientists are looking more for what damage is happening to the compressor fins, and if a pressurized tire can survive in a vacuum.

This is going to make a lot of these "tests" seem less frustrating.