Best way to explore Kerbin?

[michaelvf]

So I'm new to this game. I've been playing Career mode and so far my biggest achievement is getting to the Mun and back. Now I got a contract for exploring several places on Kerbin and that's giving me some trouble. With my limited science (and experience) I have not been able to build a plane that can travel halfway around Kerbin, do the surveys and then back again... So I was thinking that maybe I should just explore the 4 places with rockets. One launch per exploration site and then use MechJeb to land near the spots... Kind of wasteful however.. And I dont even know if a contract can be partitioned in this manner.

Any ideas for the best way to do these kind of contracts?

Edited May 4, 2015 by michaelvf

[stibbons]

For locations that are close together but a long way from KSC, I've had some success with building a plane, and then strapping some booster rockets to it for a suborbital hop. The rocket stages will get you up and there, and then discard them and fly between your survey locations using air breathing engines.

[Cebi]

Suborbital hops with space planes or big patience with conventional plane. What technodes did you unlocked so far?

[Warzouz]

Yep I've accepted thoses contracts too. I'm quite low tech, and still not went to the Mun. My plane surely can't get that far. But my issue is that thos missions are VERY long and slow as physical warp drive my planes to the ground.

In sandbox, I've tried some turbo jets plane : they fly very well I'm sure this is the way to go.

[michaelvf]

I got the entire Tier3 and few of the Tier4 techs.. So I guess the booster idea is possible. Then I just need to learn to build something that is stable enough for me to fly.. and land!!!

[Dilli]

In 0.90 I found that a plane that did suborbital but high hops worked well. I included a probe core with SAS so that engineers, scientists and new pilots could pilot the craft. The ability to land by deploying a top mounted parachute also helped on some of the more difficult/short landing sites.

[Juicy]

Alternatively, if your plane has a lot of winglift and enough thrust, strap some fuel tanks on top of it with radial decouplers. You'll want to put them more or less above the center of mass, and disable the fuel tanks on your hull.

Also remember to add fuel-pipes going from the tanks to your hull. Once they're (nearly) empty, just enable the tanks in your hull again, tip your plane over a bit, and detach the "fuel tank stage".

My smallest dual-engine plane using this system has a total of 8 fuel tanks: one on each engine, two on the hull, and a pair of detachable fuel pods of two tanks each. It easily reaches either pole or any of the other landmasses, though it's quite slow, so you need time for a long flight.

[Jaeleth]

The "kerbal way": if you are not entirely locked in these kind of contracts just let them gathering dust on the shelf and get back to them when you get to whiplash engine. When I was at the level I did em with ballistic missiles, yes, it is somewhat wasteful but considering the usually generous payment, it is still profitable, which is what really matters, and my patience has a price also .

if you want to be on the economic side, though, and do not tend to fall asleep while piloting your slow flying plane ( yes, it happened to me, nore than once, lol... ) i'd advice a big plane with plenty of fuel and a detachable rover at the rear to land near the spot. In 0.9 you had to land them before going away for 2.5km, which implied very low dropping and a series of "aerobatic" manuevers to keep the plane flying at close range until the rover was on the ground, but on 1.0 you can put 25km between yourself and the parachuting rover so... Plenty of time

as for ballistic suborbital planes, i had one of these, but the concept never worked too well, it will be less testing to your patience though, and will prevent many accidents of the "sleeping while flying" type

by the way, you can land anywhere without breaking your landing gear, in this game, even a fast SSTO can do this providing it glides below, say, 80m/s, so you can always opt for going there, land, and retrieve the plane, it will be more expensive though...

Edited May 4, 2015 by Jaeleth

[michaelvf]

Maybe waiting is what I should do then... I guess going to Minmus to do some science gathering is more profitable at this stage anyway

[Poofer]

I managed to lock myself with one of those contracts, and the locations where almost the other way around Kerbin. After much explosions and sacrifices to Cthulhu i decided to design a stable plane, not use any jets (since that's the only engine i had for planes atm) and just strap a pair of the longest 1.25m SRBs on the wings with pylons, and a rocket engine (i forget which, the one with 200 Thrust on ASL) to get myself on a suborbital flight. Mind you, this was only to get the "above 16km", which was 1/4 of the contract. The rest i built a plane with jet engines, put mechjeb into it and watched a movie.