Mobile Lab on Kerbin

[Provisional Name 12]

So, I was up late last night drinking my way through a problem, how to best mine science data from Kerbin. I want to transverse the biomes and gather/analyze all the science and crunch it all for good and I would like to do it quickly and efficiently. My first attempts at making a nuclear fan based plane like the banshee from starcraft failed, I am terrible at planes anyway so I don't know why I tried. Have other people done this? What is a good way? I could easily make a rover, but I am worried it would be time consuming to pilot. I am not running stock as well so mod suggestions are welcome.

[The Aziz]

Rover packed with science instruments, a scientist to reset some of them and that container plus Bon Voyage mod.

Click target biome on map, Poheali! And wait(doing whatever you want in the meantime) till you get a notification that it arrived. Collect science, repeat until all science on Kerbin is yours.

Also. Do not. Ever. Use MPL itself on Kerbin surface, it gives huuge penalty to research.

Edited July 2, 2018 by The Aziz

[Provisional Name 12]

This is brilliant, thanks.

Is that true about the penalty? How much is it?

[The Aziz]

According to wiki it's 90% penalty. So from some experiments you would get nothing at all.

So if you want to process that data, just transfer it to any device that is capable of spaceflight (idk, like a rocket standing on the launchpad) and carry it to any other place with MPL, like station in low Kerbin orbit. That's just an example.

[TheFlyingKerman]

There are 11 biomes on Kerbin

Shores, grasslands, highlands, mountains, desert,

northern ice shelf,  southern ice shelf, ice caps,

tundra, badlands,

water

The first group of 5 is drivable from KSC. The ice shelves are so flat that it is easy to land a plane on it, although I'd wait until getting the panther for a supersonic jet. For tundra and badlands I parachute the experiments down. Water is pretty much done in the first launch.

[LordFerret]

4 hours ago, TheFlyingKerman said:

There are 11 biomes on Kerbin

Shores, grasslands, highlands, mountains, desert,

northern ice shelf,  southern ice shelf, ice caps,

tundra, badlands,

water

The first group of 5 is drivable from KSC. The ice shelves are so flat that it is easy to land a plane on it, although I'd wait until getting the panther for a supersonic jet. For tundra and badlands I parachute the experiments down. Water is pretty much done in the first launch.

Not to mention there is a bunch of Science to be obtained right at KSC itself. Hitting up all these areas first should give you science enough to unlock a nice portion of the Tech Tree, enabling you to build a nice plane or rover or......

[Gargamel]

14 hours ago, TheFlyingKerman said:

Water is pretty much done in the first launch. 

If you mean to or not....

 

9 hours ago, LordFerret said:

Not to mention there is a bunch of Science to be obtained right at KSC itself. Hitting up all these areas first should give you science enough to unlock a nice portion of the Tech Tree, enabling you to build a nice plane or rover or......



Aren't the flagpoles themselves their own biomes too?  Great map BTW.

EDIT:  I see one marked, but what about the pad pole?

[TheFlyingKerman]

I mean with some gravity turn the first Flea should splash down into water...

[LordFerret]

13 hours ago, Gargamel said:

EDIT:  I see one marked, but what about the pad pole?

Unlike the main flag pole, the pad pole isn't its own biome. I did once however get a weird science reward from it... I climbed to the top, and in doing science, I got a message about 'flying low over Kerbin' or something to that effect.

One thing about the pad pole, you can destroy it. I did anyway. I fell off the pole from the top and landed head (helmet) first on its base, and the thing exploded. Afterward, walking on the debris (trying to squeeze between two broken slabs) sent my Kerbal flying with spagettification, landing over by the runway. Weird. I posted about this a good while back. I don't remember the thread, but the image is below.....

 

 

The map was not mine, I grabbed it off the web. Don't know who created it.

[suicidejunkie]

On 7/2/2018 at 1:57 AM, The Aziz said:

According to wiki it's 90% penalty. So from some experiments you would get nothing at all.

So if you want to process that data, just transfer it to any device that is capable of spaceflight (idk, like a rocket standing on the launchpad) and carry it to any other place with MPL, like station in low Kerbin orbit. That's just an example.

Try putting jump jets on the MPL.  You need a good deal of thrust, but not much fuel since you only need to bounce high enough to press the science button.  With ISRU you can refuel it indefinitely.

Or go for a straight aircraft to get the science, and analyze it while in flight to your next biome.  Jet engines will provide plenty of electricity, and parachutes can be repacked for short and/or vertical landings.

[KerikBalm]

What tech do you already have? a biome hopping plane would be good, especially if it has ISRU capabilities

[SleepingFox]

Are all these plots on the base itself available without upgrading structures?

[Laie]

6 hours ago, SleepingFox said:

Are all these plots on the base itself available without upgrading structures?

I've recently done my first round, in a juno-driven contraption rolling on landig gear, and can assure you that (e.g.) the Wind Tunnel doesn't exist on a lvl-1 R&D, and rolling over the plot where it will eventually be doesn't provide any science.

Several structures are hard to get to on early tech. For the tracking station dishes, you have to get onto the base plate; on other buildings you have to stick your nose into some corner or crevice. Kerbals can usually get there on foot, but if you want temperature readings and mystery goo, you need to come with a vehicle. Proper rovers on ruggedized wheels make this much easier, of course, but by then I don't even bother with KSC science anymore.

[Snark]

A biome-hopping plane can fly really long distances, if it's built efficiently.  Much faster than a rover, easy to land anywhere, and (for the thermometer and atmosphere analyzer) can grab both the flying-over and landed-on science results.

Personally, I usually don't spend too much time trying to scour Kerbin itself, mainly because just a couple of flights are enough to hit orbit, and another flight or two beyond that will get me to the Mun, and then the science is worth so much more that it's simply not worth my time to try to squeeze every last drop of science out of Kerbin itself.

Of course, if the goal isn't simple practicality but rather the challenge itself of hitting everything on Kerbin, then that's another matter.