A quick spin in career mode

[Boris_T_Roach]

for an old hand like me

Well since I had today off and my sandbox duna missions are goign fine, I thought lets try career mode

After some wibbly wobblyness and doing science around Kerbin, I thought what the heck... only got a few parts, lets see how far I can go out

Hmmmm past the orbit of Minimus.... what about landing on Minimus ? lots of Dv left yeah lets give it a shot.

hmmm no RCS , no mechjeb and only a 1 man capsule/science lab/mystery goo/fuel tank/small engine/landing legs to fly with.

Aim for the mint green flats.... and use the nav ball

1 successful bad ass landing later....

Jeb not only made it down, but planted a flag, grabbed a surface sample and landed his ship safely back on Kerbin

Boris

For science of course.... lots of it

[Thomas988]

Nice job!

[morel333]

Nice job!

My 2d Minimus RD (with science lab) ship (1st ship with solar panels hehe) is still on Minimus orbit

Flew there/landed/probed lots of zones. Left not enough fuel for return trip (can leave Minimus with no problem, but will be "lost in space").

And since i dont have a docking port/hitchhiker module/3 man capsule yet for a rescue/refuel mission, brave Kerbols will have to enjoy staying on Minimus for a bit longer then expected.

[Immashift]

Nice job OP!

I think a lot of people start their landings with Minmus because of how forgiving it is. Especially the flat areas.

I'd also suggest for a pile of science, take your minmus ship, and burn till you escape kerbin SOI. Do all your science, which then counts as deep space science.

Then turn around and burn right back at Kerbin and go home. Interplanetary science without a Duna mission! \0/

Here's how I started out my career mode last night, perhaps you'll get some new ideas or something

These can all be clicked for 1080p size.

So after some orbital stuff, I put this together. It took off a little more... aggressively, than I had thought it would:

That ship did successfully land on Minmus. Shows ya just how little you actually need:

The first flight of the Mun lander wasn't -quite- as successful. Note Jeb in the corner

Nor did its first landing go too well either:

Final successful lander:

Aaaaand almost got obliterated by my own dumped stage coming down:

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I put a basic station up in orbit without any RCS at all (except the left pod, which is a life support delivery):

Anyway that's been my career mode so far. I'm at the point where I really need to land on something interplanetary to get good science, or do a huge flyby of the Jool system.

But career mode is fun. Especially doing things like stations early on, trying to make up for parts that aren't there. Like RCS, or the 6 direction port thingy.

Edited January 14, 2014 by Immashift

[CalculusWarrior]

Nice job! Career mode is definitely a challenge in a different sort than just strapping on more Mainsails and big orange fuel tanks to your favourite lifter. It forces you to think laterally and use parts that you wouldn't normally touch. I've found my sandbox creations to be a lot more diverse after I tried it.

[Kasuha]

The first time I played Career (in 0.22) it really made me think different and taught me that smaller does not mean weaker. It also made me build my first real probe and rover.

The second time I played it (0.23) it was kinda boring.

[Sirine]

The first time I played Career (in 0.22) it really made me think different and taught me that smaller does not mean weaker. It also made me build my first real probe and rover.

The second time I played it (0.23) it was kinda boring.

Same thought, I was like have design 4 craft, and my tech max. I switch back to sandbox mode.

[Garek]

Nice job! Career mode is definitely a challenge in a different sort than just strapping on more Mainsails and big orange fuel tanks to your favourite lifter. It forces you to think laterally and use parts that you wouldn't normally touch. I've found my sandbox creations to be a lot more diverse after I tried it.

This is so true. For example, I'm using the station science mod, and unlocked the lab before any 2.5m lifter technology. So I tried creating an appropriate lifter by clustering 6 1.25m liquid rockets around a seventh - it took me like three days to realize that I made a low-tech 3.75m rocket by doing that. And you know, it actually works pretty nice, at least when I got the strutting right.

[soloz]

Career mode had me starting to think about how to do things in a more realistic manner. For things like one way probes I use injection and insertion stages instead of throwing a nuke on it and calling it done. I even did this with my first duna manned mission even tho I had a nuke on it as backup in case of attack from the kraken or I derped.