Multiple experiments on same ship?

[Zamolxes77]

I'm trying to science mine the Mun and I need several extra copies to feed my hungry science labs.

My question is, if I send a science hopper with 4 different capsules, can I store a copy of each experiment in each capsule? Or I have to do multiple trips down to same biome to get multiple copies?

[FancyMouse]

Yes you can. One trip 4 copies, as long as you know how to take data & store experiments to pods using EVA.

[Vanamonde]

However, each time you perform the same experiment in the same place, you will get less science out of it. I usually do 2 runs at most, because after that it's not really worth it. 

[FancyMouse]

8 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

However, each time you perform the same experiment in the same place, you will get less science out of it. I usually do 2 runs at most, because after that it's not really worth it. 

For traditional transmission/recovery, yes, but remember the lab change in 1.1... There is a use case now to collect duplicates.

[Zhetaan]

You can have as many identical copies of an experiment as you have experiment pods on the ship, plus one copy for each command module (you'll have to work out for yourself whether this requires you to take a scientist to rest said experiments).  However, you cannot store multiple identical copies of an experiment in a single command module.

For example, let's say you take two Goo pods and a lander can to the Mun and land in the Midlands.  You can take and store one copy in your lander can, if you have a scientist you can rest and take another copy that stays in that Goo pod, and take a third copy that stays in the other Goo pod.  You cannot bring those pod-bound copies into the lander can, though, because it will dump extra copies of the result--the extra results must stay in the Goo pods, which means that you cannot run those Goo pods again until you can transmit, transfer, recover, or reset those results.

Practically speaking, this means that while you can get all the practicable science out of a single run with this design, you are limited to only one run at a time:  after every hop, you have to remove the data to wherever it will be used and reset the experiment.

I can think of three ways to carry multiple identical science results that also let you reset the experiment and use a biome hopper.

1. You can take multiple command pods.  This has the advantage of letting you keep the repeated results separate.
2. You can take a Mobile Processing Lab.  Labs can hold multiple copies of a result, though they can only process one into data.  Of course, since they can also reset experiments, if you have one of these then you can use one of each experiment module and just run-and-reset as many times as you need.
3. You can take an EVA kerbal.  They can also carry multiple copies of results (that's why you get the dump warning when you try to board a command module with multiples, not when you take the extra copy from the experiment).  Command chairs don't store science; it stays with the kerbal.  Slap a command chair onto your lander and go crazy.

 

[bewing]

36 minutes ago, Zhetaan said:

 Command chairs don't store science; it stays with the kerbal.  Slap a command chair onto your lander and go crazy.

^This. You don't need 4 pods, as long as you're willing to let a Kerbal spend an entire trip in an external command seat. You need an extra Kerbal inside a pod to take crew reports. So a two-seat pod, or two pods (the external Kerbal has to come from somewhere).