How to reach 2500m/s in career mode in very beginning

[Arska]

When you start career and do contracts then in early stage comes the job to gain 2500m/s.

I have tried this with the modules that are available in the beginnig but no success. At the best I reach some 2100m/s.

So if you have answers and solution pls. post here.

[Thnd3r]

If you can get to orbit, try going to a very high elliptical orbit. Something like 500k Ap, then when you get there fire your engine straight at kerbin. That should do it. Make sure to have heat shield for reentry.

[capi3101]

You can generally get going that fast by getting into orbit; it's tricky with the early tech but doable. Definitely helps if you watch your ascent profile. I'd go into details but I need to get somewhere right now; if I have time I'll edit this post later with something quite a bit more useful to you.

EDIT: Why not go about editing something at 2:30 in the morning, right?

Alright - so the structure of the tech tree changed in 1.0 and the folks that maintain the wiki haven't gotten around to updating that data yet, I'm going off of memory here and as I mentioned it's 2:30 AM where I'm at and haven't had much sleep, so take this advice with a grain of salt.

You can build an orbit-capable craft pretty early on. I don't know if the old "exploding SRB staging" trick still works or not; even if it does, with the new stock aero you want to chute for a stage TWR of about 1.2-1.3 to keep drag from building up. I personally built up some tech before reaching orbit, gaining access to stack decouplers, FL-T200 fuel tanks and the LV-T45 "Swivel" engine. Most folks have observed that LKO takes about 3500-4000 m/s of delta-v now, depending on how much you muck it up on the ascent. Couldn't say how many SRBs that equates to; I know that with just a small chute, command pod and decoupler you need about 11 FL-T200 tanks to make orbit with a single LV-T45.

The launch profile now goes something like this:

1) Right after launch, turn to 80 degrees elevation on course 090.

2) At about 5,000 meters, begin a slow pitching maneuver downwards, maintaining course 090. Keep your heading within 10 degrees of prograde; ideally you're at 45 degrees somewhere around 15k.

3) At that point, look at your time to apoapsis. When you get to 40 seconds to Ap, you can reduce your elevation to 20 degrees. At 50 seconds to Ap, reduce to 10 degrees; for a minute or more, fly along the horizon.

4) Since you're going for a speed record, you just have to keep on burning; you don't actually have to go into orbit. Were you headed to orbit, you'd stop your burn once your Ap was where you wanted it (the lower the better in this case since you won't have a lot of extra delta-V to blow), setup a maneuver node at Ap to raise the Pe and make the burn when the time comes. Once you're out of atmo, the game is the same ol' KSP.

Well, hopefully that's helpful to you. Best of luck.

Edited April 30, 2015 by capi3101

[Venusgate]

To paraphrase as said above, the 2500m/s record is a symbiotic goal of the "orbit kerbin!" record. a 70x70 orbit is just over 2100 m/s, but put a little more stank on it, and you'll easily get up to 2500. If you want to risk it, and dont want a wildly eliptical orbit, when you re-enter from, say a 120000m Ap, the upper layer of the atmo is still thin enough that it wont slow you down, and closer than 70k, so you'll get a couple more 10's of m/s before air resistance starts cutting you off.

[SRV Ron]

You will get that speed when you do your first Mun flyby. Also, from a 70K perigee with a high elliptical orbit.

[EtherDragon]

You will get that speed when you do your first Mun flyby. Also, from a 70K perigee with a high elliptical orbit.

(BEGIN PEDANTARY)

SRV - this is me being perfectly pedantically precise, so don't take offense as it's not serious: Technically perigee only applies to Earth, not Kerbin. "Periapsis" is the generic term, which applies to any body.

Here is a list of other apsides that refer specifically to other bodies right in the name:

Perigee - the periapsis of an object orbiting the Earth.

Perilune - periapsis of an object orbiting the Moon.

Perijove - orbits Jupiter.

Perihelion - orbits the Sun.

Periastron - orbits another star.

(END PEDANTARY)

Now, back to your regularly scheduled topic! =D

[Wanderfound]

(snip pedantry)

You left unaddressed the most important question: Perikee, Perikerb or Perikay?

[capi3101]

Perikeet? Norwegian Blue parrot pining for the fjords?

Edited April 30, 2015 by capi3101

[Wanderfound]

Perikeet? Norwegian Blue parrot pining for the fjords?

A Perikeet would have to be a New Zealand parrot, surely.

[Superfluous J]

A Perikeet would have to be a New Zealand parrot, surely.

That would be a Perikiwi.

Actually that's 2 of them.

[SRV Ron]

Thread, hijacked by the grammar police.

Back on subject.

From a 2240+ orbital speed to 2500 to set the speed record just needs a bit more thrust. Aim for a very shallow reentry window to control reentry heating.

[ghpstage]

I thought this record contract disappears permanently if you leave the atmosphere, or perhaps make it to orbit?

Always has for me at least so i've never completed it

[Captain H@dock]

I thought this record contract disappears permanently if you leave the atmosphere, or perhaps make it to orbit?

Always has for me at least so i've never completed it

Could also be a bug. I don't understand why accepted contract would disappear, but I think I had my orbit contract disappear while attempting it (but with A LOT of reverts and quicksaves).

[MisterFister]

I thought this record contract disappears permanently if you leave the atmosphere, or perhaps make it to orbit?

Always has for me at least so i've never completed it

Could also be a bug. I don't understand why accepted contract would disappear, but I think I had my orbit contract disappear while attempting it (but with A LOT of reverts and quicksaves).

It's not even an "accepted" contract, its a default gimme-contract, the culmination of all the World First contracts (distances, altitudes, and speeds).

I, too, run into the issue where if I don't mind precisely how I go about establishing my first orbit, I destroy the contract. Even quickloading can't restore it, I don't think.

I have done some testing (literally, since I run Kerbal Construction Time -- awesome mod, I highly recommend it) and I'm 80% certain that this speed record is pegged to surface velocity, not orbital velocity. The navball will key over to orbital mode automagically after a certain altitude, and once your oV hits 2500m/s, my sV read only ~2050m/s. With a 4200dV craft restricted to T3 tech, with a single upgrade on Launchpad and nothing else, I can juuust barely make both orbit and this speed record, and the speed record is the more difficult of them to accomplish.

I'm not calling bug on this (I can't rule it out, either) but at a minimum, Squad might wanna make the contract description clearer on this one.

Update: I've established an equatorial orbit, Ap975km, Pe71km, at Pe sV=2505m/s oV=2730m/s. Still didn't trigger the award. Less than 20 units of LF, too, forcing me to retro pretty close to Ap, and from that altitude, the descent is gonna be quite toasty. :-\

[LN400]

"Good" to see others having issues with the 2500 record. I was thinking getting into orbit would void the contract but now I'm not sure at all. Can someone verify whether this disappearing business is intended or a bug? If it is intended, then I would like to see ingame in the contract description any factors that would kill the contract.

[Skorpychan]

Getting into orbit usually completes it, because that's how I did it. Got into LKO, then burned pretty much all my fuel to get my speed up to the mark. Then I just orbited Kerbin for a bit until it triggered before re-entering.

[MisterFister]

Yeah, this contract is pegged to surfaceV, not orbitalV. So there's that.

[Black Eye Guy]

On 4/29/2015 at 2:26 PM, Arska said:

When you start career and do contracts then in early stage comes the job to gain 2500m/s.

I have tried this with the modules that are available in the beginnig but no success. At the best I reach some 2100m/s.

So if you have answers and solution pls. post here.

I finally achieved 2550 m/s...ship config is 4 large solid boosters, 5 liquid fuel tanks with motor..... wont do it straight up, after first stage start a tilt to about 15 deg, on 3rd stage tilt to about 30 deg...when you get to the liquid fuel motor make sure it is at full throttle (Z) and you can get to about 2550 m/s