career mode

[Kaelin]

Ok. with the advent of .23 I finally returned to career mode curious about it.

I'm still a 'new' pilot, meaning I can get into space, I can do lots of funky things but planet landing, I can't do. (dont ask me how many kerbals I've stranded on the mun, from lack of having fuel to get them home, but a solid mun lander design is not what I'm after here).

Career, looks interesting. I've built up a fair bit, and managed to get some research points... somehow. I've got the goo container, etc, but thats about it (stage 1 research).

How do you build up research to unlock all the extra toys.

so far I've done EVA at ground, and orbit, soil samples of water and the landing base, goo samples during ground, acelleration and orbit. But short of breaking my trend and managing a safe landing on the mun WITH Return, I dont see how could get more.

Does the various area's have different EVA stuff? so, if I do an eva say, on a polar ice cap, and get soil samples there, would that help me get more points?

[Dedjal]

Yes. Kerbin has alot of biodomes where you can gather research points.

Grassplains, mountains, polar caps, desert, water just to name a few.

I do not know for certain, but maybe the wiki site has information about how and where.

Edit: I tend to just send a spaceship out of the kerbin system, do eva, report etc.

That tends to give me enough points to get solar panels for prolonged journeys.

Edited December 18, 2013 by Dedjal

[stibbons]

You don't have to land on the Mun, but you also get a lot of science for successful flybys and orbiting at a couple of different heights.

In LKO and (I think) low munar orbit, the biomes also count when you EVA, so EVA over the oceans and over the polar regions, etc.

[SkyRender]

My favorite opener for tech level 0 is a six-tank rocket with 3 sets of "self-decoupling" booster arrays (ie. they blow each other up and the set above blows up the last of them when they activate) below it. Even if I'm not on top of my game with them, I still manage to get to orbit with around 90/110 or so fuel left, which is enough for a low Minmus flyby followed by a quick Mun flyby on the way home (even a low one if I have enough fuel and time it right). Thanks to the addition of Minmus' biomes, this is even more profitable than before, especially since it's very easy to get EVA reports on at least 3 Minmus biomes during a low-pass flyby with a periapsis of ~10KM.

[Kaelin]

Hm. Now I think I remember you could use just one, say, bio thing for multiple places. Is it worth it now that use use the goo canister once... to carry multiple of them on your ship? or just do multiple flights?

[technion]

It doesn't take much to unlock the LV-909. Putting a small tank and one LV-909 on top of enough T-30's to get into orbit is enough to do a Mun flyby. It's enough to land actually.. but you're asking about avoiding that. Doing a mun flyby and grabbing an EVA and crew report is worth a lot.

[ArmchairGravy]

This is how I bootstrap science:

1st launch--just a command pod. Crew report, and EVA reports and surface samples from the launch pad, grass, and landing strip. Recover the pod, and unlock Basic Rocketry and Stability.

2nd launch--put goo containers and the chute on the pod. If you design well you can get into a polar orbit where you can suck up EVA reports on all the biomes. Once you recover the pod, unlock General Rocketry, Survivability, Science Tech, and General Construction. You may need another flight to get all 4.

3rd & 4th launches--you now have enough bits to put together a craft that will do a flyby of Mun and Minmus (separate trips!). Take goo and the materials bay with you. You will make a hefty amount of science from these trips.

From here on, I recommend exploring Minmus first until you get the Poodle and Skipper engines unlocked as you need far less delta-v compared to Mun.

Hope this helped!