Transmit or Wait

[jlrdsr]

Hey guys

Ive been pondering what to do with my Eve and Duna probes. Im new at this so I only got Encounters right at the edge of the SOI's of the planets, and im still fairly low in the tech tree (teir 5ish), so all i had was a meterials bay, 2 goo canisters and a theromomiter. So after i got the high over Eve/Duna science and saw how much science i would loose i just couldent bring myself to transmit it. All my probes have parachutes so i decided to try and return them, I didint have enouth fuel to try and get encounters so i just put them in orbits that were as close to kerbins as possible for as long as possible (they all cross kerbins orbit at one point). My problem with transmiting the science is that if i returned the probes id get over 100 science, but by transmiting that number goes down to about 30, and i just couldent bring myself to do that. I still have a good amount of rcs left on my probes to get an aerocapture (I hope so at least) so its just a matter of time. But what do you guys think? Would you transmit the science? Its still possible for me to do so if i wish, but these probes were origonally made to go to mum/minmus and return, so thats why they have parachutes and it just hurts to look at all that wasted science

Thanks for reading

Edited January 25, 2014 by jlrdsr

[MaverickSawyer]

I ALWAYS return anything that doesn't have a 100% transmission rate. In other words, I transmit crew and EVA reports, but that's it. Everything else comes home.

[Name Lips]

I ALWAYS return anything that doesn't have a 100% transmission rate. In other words, I transmit crew and EVA reports, but that's it. Everything else comes home.

Is there waste if you transmit? Well, I know the short answer is yes, but let's say there is 500 science to be had orbiting a moon. You can transmit and only get 100 of it. But if you go back 4 more times, do you eventually get the entire 500?

[MaverickSawyer]

Nope. Once you return the data, either by transmission or return, it's done. Some missions can be repeated for a slight bump (surface samples in particular) if you do a return the first time, but it's usually only a point or less.

[jlrdsr]

I think you only get the persentage of the 500 that the experiment has. So if 100 of the 500 comes from the meterials bay, then you would only get its transmition persentage of that 100. And also you cant get that 500 in one mission, you can only get 40% of if it. I think thats how it works anyway.

[Alistone]

You won't get "all" of the data by transmitting. So you'll have to send a second mission to get the rest. May as well transmit now and get the tech you need to do return missions to repeat it since you'd have to repeat it to get the rest of the science anyways.

[jlrdsr]

Cool, that was just the kind of advice i needed! Thanks for your help.