Next Goal: What to do after achieving orbit....

[davidpsummers]

I have built (in career mode) a craft that can a capsule into any low orbit. So I'm wondering what to make my next goal? Thoughts are a space station or landing on one of the moons? Suggestions on which would be better (or other things one might work toward)

[MarcusQ]

The Mun or Minmus are quite popular, particularly minmus; lots of science to be had there, and the flats are pretty easy to land on!

[AustralianFries]

Station building would be a good idea. Helps you grasps some of the mechanics of the game and increases your actual piloting skill.

[Tex]

Take a look at the early US space programs, like Mercury or Gemini, and get some ideas from there!

Personally, I'd recommend trying to dock two vessels together if you haven't already. That's a good starting point there, and then with that experience, station building should be a snap. Other than that, I'd say to try to make some impactor probes to send to the Kerbinar moons, so you know that you can reach them.

[Robbii6]

A Gemini mission would be a good start

[Hans Dorn]

Landing on minmus is a good start. It's low gravity makes it a good target for practicing.

[SRV Ron]

Do some orbital flyby with return trajectory. Then, go for orbit and return. The same ship should be able to do both for Mun and Minmus. With the orbits and flyby, you should have obtained enough science tech to build unmanned probes with solar panels. Then design and do a landing and return using probes before committing Kerbals to the mission.

[iBeej]

Building a space station is cool. But rendezvous and docking can be one of the most difficult things to learn. If you're starting out, I recommend moving from orbits to larger orbits and intersects with planetary bodies or moons. Specifically Minmus. It orbits further from Kerbin, so it's relative velocity is slower compared to the Mun and it has a smaller mass and less gravity, making landings exceptionally easier than the Mun.

I would suggest getting a Minmus landing under your belt, then the Mun, and then focus on the space station and planetary phase angles.

I wish I would have had somebody tell me to do it that way when I first started because I learned the hard way, with a lot more concepts thrown at me then a gentle easing in to it. I don't regret it, but the last thing you want to do is become frustrated.

Go to Minmus and then report back.

Good luck!

[Syphus]

If you're in career mode, docking / space stations take a little bit to have all their parts unlocked. So I am going to second either Minimus or the Mun. The former is my first suggestion because it is going to be easier for you.

[cantab]

The natural progression I think is to orbit the Mun or Minmus. You'll learn how to set up and carry out manouevres, how to control your orbit on arriving at a body, and how to control your orbit around the primary upon leaving that of a satellite. For Minmus, you can add in how to match inclinations.

Also worth doing is playing around in Kerbin orbit. Transfer into a higher orbit, then back into a lower one. Make a plane change, then make one without also raising your orbit at the same time. Observe what radial burns do.

Also try some more launches. Put something into an inclined or retrograde orbit. Try and launch into as near a polar orbit as you can (hint: just going north won't do it); once you're there, do lots of EVA reports over all the biomes for SCIENCE! While you're at it, practice EVAing and using the jetpack - an essential skills for transferring Kerbals between craft, itself invaluable for bigger missions. Be gentle and patient, little taps on the buttons, and don't forget you can turn your headlamps on with L.

Once you're comfortable with EVAing and making orbital changes in Kerbin orbit, work on rendezvousing - getting two ships to within a few dozen metres of each other with practically no relative motion. I learnt with the short guide here: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Basic_maneuvers . Rendezvousing and docking are different skills, both can be used alone, and I suggest practicing them separately. Docking ports in any case aren't unlocked until later in the tech tree.

[ArmchairGravy]

Do some orbital flyby with return trajectory. Then, go for orbit and return. The same ship should be able to do both for Mun and Minmus. With the orbits and flyby, you should have obtained enough science tech to build unmanned probes with solar panels. Then design and do a landing and return using probes before committing Kerbals to the mission.

I agree with this post. Once you get some practice you can skip the flybys and go straight for orbit, but starting out with flybys is the safer course and nets decent science.

[cantab]

I'd say a Mun flyby and return is actually harder than entering orbit. You need to be pretty precise to set up a free-return trajectory, and if you just go for the Mun by any old route (or make a hashup of your trans-Munar-injection burn) you'll probably either get in a high Kerbin orbit that takes a lot of fuel to deorbit from, or be completely ejected from Kerbin's SOI.

A Mun flyby without return is of course simple.

[davidpsummers]

Take a look at the early US space programs, like Mercury or Gemini, and get some ideas from there!

Personally, I'd recommend trying to dock two vessels together if you haven't already. That's a good starting point there, and then with that experience, station building should be a snap. Other than that, I'd say to try to make some impactor probes to send to the Kerbinar moons, so you know that you can reach them.

Well, I did think about Gemini and Apollo (I'm probably half way between Mercury and Gemini). I'm sure, like NASA, do stuff like that on my way to the goal. But I think it will work better if I have a goal.

What do I do, just remove the capsule and drive the top stage into the moon?

I think I can reach them. Though its a puzzle. My current ship will do an eccentric orbit with an appogee of about 1,500,000 km (perigee 100 km). (I haven't tried to see how big a circular orbit I can do because there is more likelihood of stranding my astronaut if I don't keep proper track of fuel.) But I was also judging rocket power by see how far straight up I could go. That last one put him into solar orbit. But I really don't understand how I could manage that if I'm limited how high an orbit I can get to. Doesn't escape velocity require more delta-v than any orbit?

Edited April 19, 2014 by Specialist290
Merging sequential posts by same user.

[katateochi]

Welcome to the forums OP!

I'd say that after reaching orbit the next thing is to go to Mun and orbit it. Mun is a really good training ground as its fairly easy to get to and perform orbital manoeuvres around but is trickier than operations around Minmus. It's also a good place to practice doing rendezvous with other craft, the concepts are the same as round any planet but its a bit more rewarding than practising around Kerbin. Once you've figured out rendezvous around Mun then attempting to build a station in Kerbin orbit will be more enjoyable.

[Pecan]

Flybys aside and assuming these are crewed so you want to bring them back - the order of difficulty is first Mun orbit and return (you should be able to do this with just the skills you have now), Minmus orbit (requires plane change), Minmus landing (you know you want to!), Mun landing (higher gravity than Minmus makes it a bit harder), rendezvous/docking (two different skills as cantab says, but you need them both if you're going to use a space-station). All that means learning to - increase orbit to intercept Mun, return, plane change to intercept Minmus, land, rendezvous and dock. Which is pretty much everything!

Somewhere in there you might also want to branch out into making (space)planes and/or rovers and bases. These last two are pretty useless but fun nevertheless. Messing around in Kerbin's system or even in its atmosphere there's quite a lot of cool things you can do and transfer windows to go interplanetary don't come around for a while anyway.

[Kerbonautical]

Personally I would put yourself into a free return from the Mun so that you can get an idea of how much fuel you may need to orbit and return, which isn't too much by the way. Then the next step after that orbit would be the landing gauging how much fuel you may need again. This is if you are playing completely stock of course as anything that can calculate Delta V for you will remove the mystery of trial and error with fuel capacities.

Generally though, at some point sooner or later it's going to become a matter of firing in the dark, so if you have some other target in mind for the future, don't feel it's necessarily a bad idea to jump straight to it. If you fail you redisign. After a few redesigns the amount of extra knowledge you have gained in engineering your rockets will go a long way to any mission, be it easier, harder or the exact same goal you redesigned for.

[Pecan]

Personally I would put yourself into a free return from the Mun so that you can get an idea of how much fuel you may need to orbit and return, which isn't too much by the way. Then the next step after that orbit would be the landing gauging how much fuel you may need again. This is if you are playing completely stock of course as anything that can calculate Delta V for you will remove the mystery of trial and error with fuel capacities.

Good point - a deltaV map is pretty useful (google it) so you know how hard it is to get somewhere. Kerbal Engineer Redux (KER), MechJeb (MJ) and VOID (just, VOID, I can't be bothered to type its full name!) are all mods which will do all the necessary calculations for you. Things that need calculating, once you know the deltaV required for your mission are your ship's launch TWR and deltaV (roughly whether it take off and how far it can go). Read-up on these and do the calculations or get the mods.

[Fireking883]

I usually try for a orbit around the mun after orbiting kerbin. My next flight is usually to land on it.

[cantab]

I think I can reach them. Though its a puzzle. My current ship will do an eccentric orbit with an appogee of about 1,500,000 km (perigee 100 km). (I haven't tried to see how big a circular orbit I can do because there is more likelihood of stranding my astronaut if I don't keep proper track of fuel.) But I was also judging rocket power by see how far straight up I could go. That last one put him into solar orbit. But I really don't understand how I could manage that if I'm limited how high an orbit I can get to. Doesn't escape velocity require more delta-v than any orbit?

As it happens, no, it can take more delta-V to reach a high circular orbit than to escape, at least if you use a Hohmann transfer.

It won't, though, take more fuel to reach that elliptic orbit than to escape. In your case the likely culprit is inconsistent launch efficiency. Poor choices of speed and direction during the various phases of the launch will cost you fuel; getting "good enough" isn't hard but getting really great takes an expert or an autopilot.

[davidpsummers]

OK, I decided to go for the moons and to first try some unmanned probes to them. So I get the stayputnick module and a bit of battery. How do I get science out of it, just hit "transmit data" now and then on the communotron 16? I can't recover the mission, how does the science get recorded?

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Land on Minmus or the mun, but try to land within a certain area, trust me. This will help with building ground bases later on.

[Tortoise]

Don't make the mistake of going into minmus.

You'll find out that it's a very dark place and you'll be bouncing up and down 26/7 and risk killing your kerbal

[Concentric]

OK, I decided to go for the moons and to first try some unmanned probes to them. So I get the stayputnick module and a bit of battery. How do I get science out of it, just hit "transmit data" now and then on the communotron 16? I can't recover the mission, how does the science get recorded?

To get science from probes, you need to have attached experiment equipment of some kind (Mystery Goo, Science Jr, Thermometer etc.) because it doesn't have a crew to take crew reports, EVA reports or surface samples. Right-click on the experiment and select the "Log Data" or similar option, then an experiment report will appear. There'll be a blue transmit option, but this cannot give you all available science, and some experiments cannot be reused. Make sure to have an antenna of some sort, or you will be unable to transmit. It will also cost electrical charge, so you may want either solar panels or lots of batteries.

A Mun/Minmus flyby gives you the opportunity to make a maneuver node and see how much delta-v you need to get orbit. The most valuable part of an impactor probe or flyby at this point is probably not the science, but the experience in getting encounters. Try to get a few Mun/Minmus orbit-return missions under your belt, manned and unmanned, then go for a Minmus landing. The flats are a good choice of landing site, as they are as flat as the name suggests, visually identifiable and at a low Minmus altitude.

Afterwards, try a Mun landing, then visit other areas of Minmus/Mun. It may be useful (experience wise) to try to land as close as possible to a previous landing site (perhaps a surviving probe?) but to get much more science you need to go to other biomes, or return with new, different experiment equipment.

Also note: science points only exist in Career mode. Space Stations and spaceplanes tend not to be good for science and generally need/want parts from later in the Tech Tree, but they are a different challenge that you may want to look into.

Edited April 19, 2014 by Concentric

[Random Tank]

Do an Eve Return.

[SRV Ron]

OK, I decided to go for the moons and to first try some unmanned probes to them. So I get the stayputnick module and a bit of battery. How do I get science out of it, just hit "transmit data" now and then on the communotron 16? I can't recover the mission, how does the science get recorded?

Plan on recovering the probe for the most science points. Both of these manned designs did fly by and orbits of Mun and Minmus returning science before solar panels were unlocked.