Sometimes, Career Mode Missions are pretty good

[ansaman]

It was called "The Vall 4 Rally" and required flybys of Dres, Pol, Tylo, and Val. I actually got it done and even did a bonus fly-by of Laythe . It ended up in orbit around Jool with quite a bit of deltaV...perhaps enough to get to Bop! Still have not finished and it was a LONG session.

It went Dres, then a opportunistic fly-by of Tylo which resulted in a very elongated orbit of Jool. On the way back, I hit Pol, then Val, then Laythe.

Yes, it was not stock. I used KW Rocketry and generated an 1050 ton monster with over 10K deltaV after reaching a high Kerbin orbit.

[Xavven]

It was called "The Vall 4 Rally" and required flybys of Dres, Pol, Tylo, and Val. I actually got it done and even did a bonus fly-by of Laythe . It ended up in orbit around Jool with quite a bit of deltaV...perhaps enough to get to Bop! Still have not finished and it was a LONG session.

It went Dres, then a opportunistic fly-by of Tylo which resulted in a very elongated orbit of Jool. On the way back, I hit Pol, then Val, then Laythe.

Yes, it was not stock. I used KW Rocketry and generated an 1050 ton monster with over 10K deltaV after reaching a high Kerbin orbit.

Nicely done! I had a Duna 3 rally yesterday that required a flyby of Duna, Ike, and Gilly. I accidentally confounded it with my Explore Jool mission and sent my Duna 3 rally rocket to Jool. /smacksforehead I'm blaming it on Gene Kerman.

[ansaman]

Nicely done! I had a Duna 3 rally yesterday that required a flyby of Duna, Ike, and Gilly. I accidentally confounded it with my Explore Jool mission and sent my Duna 3 rally rocket to Jool. /smacksforehead I'm blaming it on Gene Kerman.

I have seen some combo orbit missions and most of those were WAY too hard to do. The missions I don't even want to try are the tourist missions which have you taking multiple people jackassing all over the Kerbol system and if you miss one checkpoint, no big payout.

[mikegarrison]

I have seen some combo orbit missions and most of those were WAY too hard to do. The missions I don't even want to try are the tourist missions which have you taking multiple people jackassing all over the Kerbol system and if you miss one checkpoint, no big payout.

Once you have been everywhere, filled out the tech tree a few times, built that giant space station, got kerbals up to level 5, etc. etc., these "rally" contracts and tourist contracts are reasons to make up missions.

It seems like a lot of people don't realize that you don't have to take all the tourists to all their destinations in one mission. You can have multiple tourist contracts open, and then when you decide to go to Eve (or wherever) you just grab all the tourists who have a destination in that system. Eventually they get everywhere they want to go and you get extra money to play with.

[mythbusters844]

It's better than the one I got today. I blindly accepted a contract to rescue a kerbal because it rewarded 130,000 funds, and then realized that it was for a kerbal in orbit around the sun. So I built a huge rocket for 50k that had 8 km/s of delta-v (I haven't unlocked nuclear or ion engines yet) and launched it into orbit and set a maneuver node to rendezvous with the kerbal. While fine-tuning my closest approach, something felt off, but I didn't know what it was. Well, eventually I found out what was "off" when I hovered over my ascending node and felt a horrible moment of realization when it said "179 degrees"...the darn kerbal was in a retrograde orbit. You know, it'd be really nice if the game actually told you the Kerbal's orbit before you accepted the contract.

Just for fun, I made a maneuver node just to see how much delta v it would take. This was the result:

25 km/s, just to match velocity...

Edited August 10, 2015 by mythbusters844

[Ripper2900]

Retro-solar orbit... Ouch!

But there is a way to see the contract orbits before you accept. The tracking station will show the orbits of contract objects, even before you've accepted. It just doesn't say which contract, the orbits relates to, so you have to guess, although it's usually not hard to see that that solar orbit belongs to the "sattelite in a solar orbit" mission.

[ansaman]

Ouch!

[Jett_Quasar]

Nicely done! I had a Duna 3 rally yesterday that required a flyby of Duna, Ike, and Gilly. I accidentally confounded it with my Explore Jool mission and sent my Duna 3 rally rocket to Jool. /smacksforehead I'm blaming it on Gene Kerman.

I build all my ships with ISRU on board. When I got the Duna 3 rally I had already visited all three destinations with the ship pictured below. As soon as I grabbed the contract and got back in my ship they handed over the cash...

All KSP images have been moved here.

JR

Edited September 28, 2015 by Jolly_Roger

[Just Jim]

Once you have been everywhere, filled out the tech tree a few times, built that giant space station, got kerbals up to level 5, etc. etc., these "rally" contracts and tourist contracts are reasons to make up missions.

It seems like a lot of people don't realize that you don't have to take all the tourists to all their destinations in one mission. You can have multiple tourist contracts open, and then when you decide to go to Eve (or wherever) you just grab all the tourists who have a destination in that system. Eventually they get everywhere they want to go and you get extra money to play with.

Agreed! I love bringing tourists on missions. They've funded many of my missions, and made me a lot of extra $$$. And I've been putting space stations in orbit around everything: Kerbin, the Mun and Minmus, Duna and Ike, and next will be Eve and Gilly, all with tourists in mind. And my newest station that I've been building the last couple days is totally geared for tourists.

This station, named Terrapin Station, has 8 hitchhiker pods in an octagon star around the core. The reason I did it this way is not just to hold a lot of tourists, but also to separate everyone with different destinations. For example: tourists going to the Mun in one pod, Duna and Ike in another, those returning from Minmus in a third, etc... Having 4 or 5 big tourist contracts going at once is a riot, but can also get really complicated, and I'm hoping this will help me keep everyone sorted out.

I'm really hoping the developers expand and add more tourist contracts... stuff like maybe "Send a 14 day vacation on an existing space station"....

[mikegarrison]

Retro-solar orbit... Ouch!

But there is a way to see the contract orbits before you accept. The tracking station will show the orbits of contract objects, even before you've accepted. It just doesn't say which contract, the orbits relates to, so you have to guess, although it's usually not hard to see that that solar orbit belongs to the "sattelite in a solar orbit" mission.

That works for satellites, but IIRC not for rescue contracts. I once accepted a solar satellite contract where I carefully put the satellite into solar orbit only to have the same retro-orbit discovery. I did eventually make a nuclear-powered electric propulsion probe that actually did have enough dV to get there.

[Woksaus]

That works for satellites, but IIRC not for rescue contracts. I once accepted a solar satellite contract where I carefully put the satellite into solar orbit only to have the same retro-orbit discovery. I did eventually make a nuclear-powered electric propulsion probe that actually did have enough dV to get there.

I have the same type of contract, I have to put a probe into a highly inclined retrograde orbit around Kerbol. How did you do it? I figure that I need at least one gravity-assist by Jool, and even then it would take so much delta-v...

[mikegarrison]

I have the same type of contract, I have to put a probe into a highly inclined retrograde orbit around Kerbol. How did you do it? I figure that I need at least one gravity-assist by Jool, and even then it would take so much delta-v...

Well you can go brute force and just make yourself a probe with massive amounts of dV, but that does pretty much require electric propulsion or it will be too costly to pay back the contract. It's hard to use a gravity slingshot to get yourself retrograde because the planets themselves are not going retrograde.

Basically you want to get yourself into a very highly elliptical orbit, then burn retrograde at the apoapsis. It will save you a lot of dV if you make your plane change out beyond Jool as opposed to making it near Kerbin, but of course it costs you dV and time to get into that highly elliptical orbit in the first place.

[Tatonf]

It's better than the one I got today. I blindly accepted a contract to rescue a kerbal because it rewarded 130,000 funds, and then realized that it was for a kerbal in orbit around the sun. So I built a huge rocket for 50k that had 8 km/s of delta-v (I haven't unlocked nuclear or ion engines yet) and launched it into orbit and set a maneuver node to rendezvous with the kerbal. While fine-tuning my closest approach, something felt off, but I didn't know what it was. Well, eventually I found out what was "off" when I hovered over my ascending node and felt a horrible moment of realization when it said "179 degrees"...the darn kerbal was in a retrograde orbit. You know, it'd be really nice if the game actually told you the Kerbal's orbit before you accepted the contract.

Just for fun, I made a maneuver node just to see how much delta v it would take. This was the result:

http://i.imgur.com/SeO4Snxh.png

25 km/s, just to match velocity...

I remember your topic on the Gameplay Question and Tutorials forum, and someone posted that the best way of doing it was to proceed with a bi-elliptical transfer to get to this orbit.

Should you do a basic Hohmann transfer, you would need 2100 m/s to get an 100 Gm apoapsis (starting in LKO), and then 5000 m/s for a retroburn to match the orbit of the kerbonaut.

Going for a bi-elliptical transfer would save up a bit less than 1000 m/s.