how to get lots of science.

[ethank793]

hi, I cant figure out how to get a lot of science fast. and im running out of ways to do so. any help?

[Zapness]

just do a lot of short flights to various places.

[jaredkzr]

Well the fastest way that I know of right now is to land on the Mun. Go to different areas such as the poles and major craters. These count as different biomes and will earn you different amounts of science. Make sure you do an EVA and get surface samples since these will earn you 100+ science points.

If you can't get to the Mun just yet, then explore Kerbin first. Go to the poles, mountains, and deserts and to reports from there.

Here is a list of the different biomes:

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Biome

[AndrewBCrisp]

Even a Mun flyby can deliver a fair bit of science - I just completed sending a single Kerbal on a free return trajectory around the Mun, making sure to get both a crew report and an EVA report while in the Mun's sphere of influence.

[LameLefty]

A Münar flyby got me nearly 300 science. Then go land on the Mün or Minmus. Expose the Goo to the environment, do a couple EVA reports (once or twice en route, once on the surface). Expose the Science Jr. materials bay to the dust on the Mün. Do an EVA on the surface, take a surface sample. Transmit a few reports back on the Science bay. Etc. I got 400+ points on each of those.

[SkyRender]

For early on, one of the easiest tricks is to just put a single pod on the launchpad and do the following: crew report, EVA report hanging onto the pod (store in the pod), EVA report from the launchpad, sample from the launchpad (store them in the pod), EVA report from off the launchpad, and sample from off the launchpad. That should get you just enough science to unlock Basic Rocketry and Survivability, which will open up your flight and science options considerably. If you're willing to store the off-launchpad data in the pod and hike all the way to the water to get another EVA report and sample, you can also get General Rocketry out of it.

[-RanZ-]

I just sent Jeb to jool, aerobraked and hitting laythe now, guessing I will hit a couple thousand science. Too bad I will have to rescue Jeb from Laythe though as I am low on fuel

edit: 2450 science! I could probably land him and get a few hundred more but a rescue from Laythe is a lot of work.

Edited October 20, 2013 by -RanZ-

[katateochi]

ethank793, If you do what SkyRender said and that will give you a kick start. After that try and just orbit Kerbin and over every kind of different terrain, mountains, desert, water, grass etc, go EAV and do an EVA report. If you go all right round doing that over everything that looks different you should get 80 or so points (maybe more).

(here's a entry level tech craft that will orbit kerbin if you want it)

I also put a vid up of me using that craft, it's no where near as good as what Scott Manely did on his first mission, but it might help -

[magnemoe]

Depend a lot on your level. In the beginning so some suborbital flights. Its smart to use two pods at once to get more output.

I would focus hard on the lower levels of the tree. You need power and more sensors more than larger boosters.

Next up should be orbit and Mun and Minmus flyby.

Next up is one Minmus landing followed by Mun landings in all biomes.

As soon as you get the 1x1 solar panels you can start to resubmit, this is important as you get more data back and only need one goo and material lab.

Remeber to use the thermometer, once you get the g-meter and the gravity meter they also gives loads of science.

You can jump up in air on Mun and get an Eva report from space close to biome.

Mark landing spots with flags, you can use one way probes for followup experiments with new equipment.

In short you can pretty much finish the science tree on Mun. However sending stuff to other places is far less grinding.

[lammatt]

land and return from anything gives you more than 500 for closer planets. havent been to many things yet, just Mun, Minmus, Ike

flyingby to further things gives quite a few hundreds too. did a tylo flyby, got ~600

[FITorion]

The trick is the word fast...

Scott Manley has got a video showing one mission that gets 6000ish science... It took 4 plus hours to do that one mission and involved much tedious report taking and many different flybys of different places.

I just got back from my mission to fly by Eve and drop probes down there... Got about 1400 science for that. Just going to Eve and back took me 4-5 hours... so Fast is not exactly a word I'd use for gaining science.

[robsr3v3ng3]

Science can be a bit of a pain in the beginning as you can't do many experiments, just goo, crew and eva reports, and surface samples. I would suggest to start with just flying to some of the different biomes on Kerbin. Then take a trip to the mun and do a bunch of tests there.

Something very important to remember is that as you leave kerbin and head to the mun you will pass through more biomes (although I'm not sure they really count as actual biomes). As you go from Launch to a stable kerbin orbit you will through these testing regions:

Surface

Low altitude (less than about 15,000m)

High altitude (above 15,000m but still in atmosphere)

Low orbit (not sure about the limit on this one but anything under about 200km is ok I think)

On the way to a low Mun orbit you then have these extra ones:

High orbit over Kerbal

High orbit over the Mun

Low orbit over the Mun

All of these are affect by what is below you on the planet/moon you're attached to. I.e. you can do experiments high over the sea, or high over grasslands and both will reward you seperately! This also counts for the poles and major craters on the Mun.

Some thing else important to remember is there is no loss for transmission! Yes you may only get say 40% for an experiment when you transmit it but you can just do it again. These is no loss in the end from transmitting (this applies to all experiments, reports and samples)

So in short, make sure you do experiments in all the regions you pass through that are listed and just test, transmit, repeat. Also as you unlock new experimental devices like the materials bay and thermometer make sure you go back and revisit old biomes. The gravioli and seismic testing parts generate a lot of science!

[grumphie]

also, if all else fails, you can just shoot an probe into space(assuming you have basic batteries and solar panels), do some goo and science junior experminets, transmit them back, and get some free science. very helpfull if youre stuck, but requires some base tech itself.

[N_Molson]

Also don't forget that almost all the experiments lose most of their value if they are not recovered. Goo canisters, in particular, suffer a nasty -80% penalty if you simply transmit them. So be sure to bring them back on Kerbin. If you want to do this in a more or less realistic fashion, you will need to achieve a powered descent, else they would burn.

[PlayMp1]

Also don't forget that almost all the experiments lose most of their value if they are not recovered. Goo canisters, in particular, suffer a nasty -80% penalty if you simply transmit them. So be sure to bring them back on Kerbin. If you want to do this in a more or less realistic fashion, you will need to achieve a powered descent, else they would burn.

This only applies until you have some form of consistent power generation, at which point you can just transmit repeatedly (because the only limit becomes electricity) and get the same number of science points as doing full returns. It takes a lot of clicking, but people have already charted out how long it takes for the diminishing returns to approach 0. Think of it like a 1/x plot.

[Ravenchant]

You're thinking of the materials lab, goo canisters only have a 60% penalty.

Of course, you can just repeat the experiment a few times and get the same amount of points. It's boring, but works.

[Ruinsage]

Get the biggest rocket you can make with your available part, slap on a lot of batteries, a transmitter, all available science equipment, and put a probe on top instead of a crew. Now launch that into deepspace (escape kerbin orbit), and transmit back several times. Make sure to also transmit samples along the way (low orbit, high orbit, if you get near the mun or minmus)

[TheReaper]

just land on bodies, get samples, and bring a lab and goos and antennas and lots of electriicty recharge with you, set action group to all experiments like goos, seismics , lab and all, i use it as 1,so press 1 and select send data , rabitly do that when you get to different biomes, you need tones of electricty, phsics warp increse the rate you can do it, land or perform flyy to kerbin atmosphere, near and high kerbin, mun bios and minmus, and return with +3000 science

[FITorion]

Science can be a bit of a pain in the beginning as you can't do many experiments, just goo, crew and eva reports, and surface samples. I would suggest to start with just flying to some of the different biomes on Kerbin. Then take a trip to the mun and do a bunch of tests there.

Something very important to remember is that as you leave kerbin and head to the mun you will pass through more biomes (although I'm not sure they really count as actual biomes). As you go from Launch to a stable kerbin orbit you will through these testing regions:

Surface

Low altitude (less than about 15,000m)

High altitude (above 15,000m but still in atmosphere)

Low orbit (not sure about the limit on this one but anything under about 200km is ok I think)

On the way to a low Mun orbit you then have these extra ones:

High orbit over Kerbal

High orbit over the Mun

Low orbit over the Mun

All of these are affect by what is below you on the planet/moon you're attached to. I.e. you can do experiments high over the sea, or high over grasslands and both will reward you seperately! This also counts for the poles and major craters on the Mun.

Some thing else important to remember is there is no loss for transmission! Yes you may only get say 40% for an experiment when you transmit it but you can just do it again. These is no loss in the end from transmitting (this applies to all experiments, reports and samples)

So in short, make sure you do experiments in all the regions you pass through that are listed and just test, transmit, repeat. Also as you unlock new experimental devices like the materials bay and thermometer make sure you go back and revisit old biomes. The gravioli and seismic testing parts generate a lot of science!

Part in Red is wrong. You get diminishing returns. Transmitting will prevent subsequent missions from getting full value from a return mission. You can destroy potential science in an area by transmitting.

Only transmit if:

You get 100%

or

You are not ever planing on doing a return mission from that area.

I transmit crew reports.

I transmitted temp and pressure data from a probe I dropped on Eve. I don't plan on ever doing a return mission from the surface... but if I do I wouldn't bring alone a pressure sensor or thermometer... as I've already depleted the area of the science from those 2 experiments... getting 60% of what I could have gotten.

[MrPopcup]

Best way to get science and in-short:

Always transmit EVERYTHING until it reaches 0.0 science points.

Always do EVA Report, as well as crew report.

Always Observe the goo and materials ( if you have the lab )

ALWAYS! take samples from ANY planet you land on, EVEN kerbin.

And optional.. Return the vessel and recover it, gives you even more science points.

NOTE*: I did all this on my first launch in career, I landed on the mun and took samples, kept doing eva reports and crew reports, I had about 370 points!

[DerekL1963]

Transmitting will prevent subsequent missions from getting full value from a return mission. You can destroy potential science in an area by transmitting.

This is... not entirely correct. Both forms of recovering science suffer from diminishing returns. Regardless of the method used to recover the science, the total science points available from a given experiment in a given location is the same.

[jpinard]

How come I keep getting a .1% or 0% multiplier? I'm not longer getting science points when I think I should.

[robsr3v3ng3]

Transmitting is the best thing to do. You get less return per experiment run, but you can run the experiments more times before you get no more science. Returning an experiment to Kerbin will give you 100% of the data, but that 100% isn't all the data that can be made from that experiment. You can go back and take a another set of data then return with that set, which will give much less than what the first gave you. If you record, return, recover and repeat until you get no more science you will get the same total science as if you record, transmit and repeat until you get nothing back.

Mapping all science experiments to an action group is a good idea (as someone else mentioned) then just transmit the ones that give you data. I click on keep for the ones that I have used up (i.e. return 0 data). This means that when I hit 1 again I can just spam the cancel button on replacing old data then click transmit for each experiment run, that way you don't have to go through each experiment to make sure you only delete the useless ones.

[JeanHavoc]

I've been noticing something of an issue with science point-returns myself, particularly when it comes to manned planetary flybys. Yesterday I had a very lengthy mission (900 days+) where I took a three man capsule on a tour of Kerbal's inner solar system. In total, I had five flyby events, one at Mun, two at Eve, one at Moho and one at Duna. Now I expected to get zero from the Mun encounter, and I had already flown by Eve once before so I expected a diminished return there as well. However, when the capsule made its way back to Kerbin I was surprised to find that I had received credit for one -and only one- flyby, that of Moho. It was so bad that none of the other encounters were even listed. Now in retrospect I remember a similar mission in which I flew by Minmus and Mun and only got points for one pass but this is a real problem now that I see it on a larger scale.

There's just no getting around the fact that it would be inconvenient in the extreme to have to limit your manned encounters to one object in one context since the rest won't be counted. I have no idea if this is a bug or a feature (or who knows, maybe both), I just think it's something people need to be aware of. I learned my lesson that's for sure.

[Eric S]

However, when the capsule made its way back to Kerbin I was surprised to find that I had received credit for one -and only one- flyby, that of Moho.

At this time (and I don't know if the devs will change it), you only get science from ship recovery for one of the places you went. You still get all the science you did in each of those places, so it's still worth doing, but you do need to keep in mind that if you're doing multiple flybys, orbits, or landings, you're doing it for the experiments, not the ship recovery science.