What should i do after Mun landing?

[BoggyDG]

I've currently made 3 Mun landings, and placed a couple of satellites in Mun orbit for contracts. Now, the question is, what do i do next? There are no contracts for a Minmus landing, so basically a waste of money, and there are only contracts for testing stuff, going to certain locations on Kerbin, and sending tourists to Mun and back. I don't wan't to send tourists to Mun, as i only the 3rd time made a rocket with enough delta-v that can return(just placed bigger fuel tanks), Testing engines can be awkward as the requirements are a bit hard to accomplish, and going to a certain location, just feels uneasy. What do i do?

[KocLobster]

If you feel like you're done with the Mun, I would suggest going to Minmus and doing every science experiment available to you, one biome at a time. And by landing on Minmus, your kerbals will level up too. After your first Minmus landing, you will start seeing more contracts for Minmus. Lastly, it's not at all a waste going to Minmus, or anywhere for that matter, even if you don't have a contract related to it at the time. You can gain tons of Science from biome hops on Minmus. I'm assuming this isn't a sandbox save; I'm guessing you're likely playing in career mode.

[Plusck]

From what you're saying, I think you do want to take tourist contracts to the Mun, and use that as an excuse to get more science and a paid way of testing and improving your rockets, and above all improving your piloting.

Especially for the piloting bit, since you can easily reduce your fuel needs by a sixth or more if you get each bit perfect compared to just "middling": a good ascent to orbit (i.e. good gravity turn) (≈400m/s saved) followed by a well-plotted Mun intercept (≈100m/s saved) followed by a very low circularisation burn direct into Mun orbit (≈100-200 m/s saved) followed by an ideally timed suicide burn (≈200-300m/s saved) followed by a clean burn off the surface and straight to a 30km atmospheric Kerbin Pe (≈100-200m/s saved).

And you definitely want to unlock science instruments in priority, so that you don't have to keep going back to the same biomes too often. It's unavoidable to a certain extent.

Taking tourists to the Mun will also give you a pretext to leave something dockable, with any surplus fuel, in Mun orbit. Dock two ships and you get the "started creating a space station" and "transferred crew in orbit" world firsts for a bit of cash and reputation, and should also trigger the possibility for "expand your space station" contracts to come up.

And if you ever get a hugely difficult contract (like: "create Mun orbiting station and have 4000 fuel"), take it - the advance is good, you've got years to do the contract and this'll let you upgrade, explore for more science, unlock parts and so on and so forth.

Finally, for Minmus: you'll get a world first payment for going to Minmus in any event. It's true that to make the most out of it cash-wise, it would be nice to have a "world-first" type of contract too. However, if you wait for those contracts to come up before exploring anywhere, your progress will be slow. Minmus is actually easier to do than the Mun: being further away is largely irrelevant since it's the moon's gravity which eats most into your fuel budget.

 

Oh and, unless you like playing with jets, never ever take Kerbin location contracts. They are a nightmare to do without a plane, and take (subjectively experienced) hours with one.

The part testing contracts, on the other hand, pay decently for minimal effort, and let you play around with different designs.

[Reactordrone]

39 minutes ago, Plusck said:

Finally, for Minmus: you'll get a world first payment for going to Minmus in any event. It's true that to make the most out of it cash-wise, it would be nice to have a "world-first" type of contract too. However, if you wait for those contracts to come up before exploring anywhere, your progress will be slow. Minmus is actually easier to do than the Mun: being further away is largely irrelevant since it's the moon's gravity which eats most into your fuel budget.

 

 

Further on that, you not only get world first payments for landing, you also get them for flyby, entering orbit, gathering first science, entering suborbital flight,  escaping Minmus, performing spacewalks in orbit, performing surface EVAs, planting a flag, performing a rendezvous in orbit, performing a docking , starting construction of the first station in orbit and returning from Minmus flyby, returning from orbit and returning from the surface. 

[Jetski]

Or just timewarp for a bit and a new set of contracts will pop up

 

[Hodari]

Even if you don't have a contract sending you there, you still get the world first payments which will make it worth going to Minmus.  And by this point in your career, unless you're playing on a higher difficulty level, you should have at least some extra money saved up and not have to worry about maxing out the payments from each mission so much.  Money's a bit tight at the start and when you still need to upgrade your buildings to level 2, but you should be past that point by now and it gets a lot easier.  If you do have a contract that's worth doing, take that and then see what else is available when you get back.  But if you don't have any good contracts waiting, don't let that stop you from taking the next step on your own.  Especially since in this case, going to Minmus won't require any new technology or even any major changes to your existing rocket designs.  You already have all the parts you need, so just go ahead and start your Minmus mission.  You can also check the contract list again as soon as you enter Minmus' SoI and see if any contracts have popped up for it then and accept those before actually entering orbit or landing.

[Nich]

Yes I had a lot of troubles getting the first minimus contracts to spawn. In fact explore Duna came up and minimus never did.

[Wemb]

Furthermore to what everyone has said, your Mun lander will be entirely capable of getting to Minmus, _and_ given Minmus's lower gravity it's entirely possible you can land, take off, and land again at least once, if not twice more and collect multiple science (assuming you bring a scientist). Furthermore, you may well find you can swap out whatever lander descent stage you currently have with an even lighter engine, and have even more dV to play with on the frozen green lump. If you've done some Munar landings, you'll find landing on Minmus trivial.  But getting into the right orbit to get to it is useful practise.  

And if you need to rake in cash, do the rescue missions, free Kerbals and money. 

Wemb