Why probes and satellites?

[The Right Stuff]

Hey everyone, new player here but starting to get the hang of it...a little. I've made three successful trips to the Mun now, and I'm generating a ton of science. I see a lot of youtube videos of folks making probes and/or satellites which look like fun. My question is why? Besides being fun, are there any practical reasons for building them? Do they generate science that make it worthwhile? All the videos I've seen have guys building and launching probes/sats but no reason for doing so? How do they help? Thanks a bunch. Peace.

[ripvanlemon]

Why build anything at all in KSP? We didn't even have career/science until .22, and people built lots of stuff anyway.

Practical reasons for sats? None really, unless you're using mods that require them for comms.

Practical reasons for probes? I dunno -- I like to use a probe to drag an asteroid into orbit then send a manned mission to rendezvous. That's not really practical I guess, but it makes sense to me.

[Godot]

There are many reasons for using probes ... just a few examples:

1. Probes are lighter

2. Probes are expenable (people might want to preserve their kerbonauts lives)

3. If using mods like TAC-Lifesupport, the additional bonus is, that probes don´t require foodstuff, O2 or water

4. Satellites might be especially useful if working with certain communication mods

[Nedal]

The remote tech mod makes satellites useful as you have to maintain a line of sight relay network to mission control to be able to transmit science, or control probes.

The tac lifesupport mod makes probes useful by making manned missions more complicated.

But unmodded. no.. not really useful. My first playthrough I never used probes because they can't generate crew/eva reports or collect surface samples. Basically only used Probe bodies to keep an interplanetary ship controllable while the lander landed and such. Or for refueling throw away ships. Or as an alternate point of control for rovers lets say.

[Robotengineer]

They are useful in modded play for scanning if you use Kethane or Scansat. Along with the reasons already listed.

[SpaceGremlin]

Back when I was learning more complicated mission profiles (like interplanetary returns), I used probes because the engineering hurdles were much lower. Once I had the basics down I was able to send kerbals quite easily.

[Scottiths]

A lot of it has to do with mods as mentioned. If you have Kethane you need to build a sat/probe to scan for it. If you have scansat you need to build a sat to do the scanning. If you have remote tech 2 you need to build com relays. That sort of thing. That and probes are lighter so they are easier to launch and you can still do science with them (you just can't get the EVA / crew report science from them)

[Pecan]

There is one particular set of things stock KSP won't show you - Easter Eggs! These are odd things that the devs have put into the programme "for fun" (or because they were bored at work one day). Using the SCANSat mod to generate maps of the various celestial bodies will reveal these as 'anomalies', so you can visit them and find out what they actually are ;-0 Good photo opportunities.

[Alshain]

I'm kind of new myself. Once I figured out the basics of orbiting, I put a couple different satellites in the air with docking ports to practice docking. They are mostly just solar panel, SAS, battery, and fuselage, but they get the job done.

[Mr_Brain]

Well, if you don't like killing your kerbals or leaving them stranded, probes are quite useful. For example, you can drop them into Jool to get atmospheric data, which would almost certainly kill kerbals, but probes can't be killed, only destroyed (at least until we get proper AIs).

[merendel]

There are also a few missions where probes are a preferable option. Most common ones would be an eve lander or something diveing deep into jool's atmosphere. While you can land on eve and return its alot easier to send a 1 way probe and transmit at least some science back than it is to send a maned return vessle. Any high dV mission is a good choice for a probe just due to weight. Ever kilo of weight you shed from payload is alot of fuel you dont need to bring to meet the requirements.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

Unless you are using mods, there is no point to a satellite.

However, probes can be quite useful in the stock game (in career mode, mostly). If your new, they are much easier to launch, as they are lighter, smaller, and you don't need to bring them back home to get the science. So far I've only sent probes to Duna and Eve, because I'm not good enough yet to attempt a manned mission.

Plus in career mode, you have limited parts at the start, so may not have all that you need for a manned mission.

[Chamisul]

With no mods

It is useful for simulating inter-system travel launching(if this is correct description) for manned mission

match the weight of probe lander to manned lander and shoot that thing to where-ever celestial rock-site you want to send your men next time

if probe fails? your men will fail

if probe succeeded land and return home? so will your men

[michaelhester07]

The best use I found for probes is for marking biomes with science stations.

4x single solar panel

1x probe core

1x small round battery

2x Mystery Goo

1x Materials experiment (science jr)

1x thermometer, seismic sensor, pressure sensor, gravioli sensor (these are all minimal weight and drag, so stick em anywhere)

1x 1meter 100 size fuel tank: If you don't take the goo and materials experiment you can replace this with 2 toroid fuel tanks to reduce the weight even more.

3x probe leg

1x rocomax small single thruster (you thought you'd never use that didn't you? all my small landers use this now)

The whole thing weighs 2 tons and easily attaches en masse to a mothership to travel to Mun, Minmus, or beyond. Build a mothership for Mun which has 8 of these on board. When you get to Mun setup a polar orbit (as opposed to the equatorial one you usually do). Detach one of each probe from your mothership and land each in a biome. Run all the experiments on the probe, then rename it (right click the core to rename it) and name it after the biome you landed in. Be sure to collect a surface sample and EVA report for each spot.

Then send a few landers with kerbals on them to collect the data and return it home. While in EVA you can remove data from the experiments from your probe when you're close enough to the experiment. Destroy the probes after you collect the data (or leave em if you want, but rename them) so you can keep track of the biomes you collected.

Lastly, return home with 2000 science from an epic farming run. For Jool I plan to use either the ion drives or nuke drives with similarly styled probes so I don't have to land manned science experiments. It saves tons on manned lander designs when I don't have to worry about carrying science experiments. You can outfit the probes with a radio if you don't think you can get a lander off the surface of what you landed on (Eve mostly).

[Tortoise]

Right now, mostly for mods.

ex: Data relay satellite (RemoteTech, AntennaRange), Kethane scanner, ScanSAT scanner, Hullcam,unmanned science probe (before sending kerbals. Or if you have TACLS and dont wanna pack resources into the rocket. Etc

[DaPatman]

In stock, their best use is for landing on Eve or descending into Jool's atmosphere - places that are really hard (if not nearly impossible in Jool's case) to bring Kerbals back from. With the right mods, however, they can be indispensible, performing multiple tasks, many of which have already been mentioned upthread.

[SelectHalfling0]

I typically roleplay, putting a ring of comsats in orbit around kerbin and the mun is typically the first task in any game of mine.

[qromodynmc]

I just love my kerbals and I dont want to send them somewhere they cant come back. Also probes are lightweight,this can be useful sometimes.

[Victus]

I build Space Stations as fuelling stations after a rendezvous/dock. A good example of a great use of a Space Station in stock KSP is a Science Station around Minmus. Dock your lander to the station, move it to Minmus, go to the surface and get your science, reset your science parts and go to another Biome.

[Travisfv]

I like my astronauts. I want to keep them alive. I've mentioned this numerous times, but I don't really leave Kerbin's SOI. But my probes do. They've landed on Duna, Laythe, Eve, Ike, and "landed" on Jool. Also, watching a tiny rocket propel it's tiny payload into the solar system is just epic in a sense to me. When I don't need a 500 ton lifter, and the whole package weights less than 10kg, and can go so far… it's just awesome.

[cantab]

In stock career, purely considering the gameplay, probes are inferior to manned ships in science-gathering, but considerably less massive. The lightest manned command module (the Mk 1 Lander Can) is twelve times the mass of the Stayputnik, meaning it's going to need a rocket about twelve times as big to launch for the same mission. As of .23.5 the ox-stats, the radial batteries, the small science instruments, and the low- and high-gain antennae (but not the med-gain one) are all physicless, in other words their mass and drag is disregarded, which helps the probe cores preserve that mass advantage.

[Duke23]

I asked the same question when they put the limitation on what science modules you could reuse in .23... Personally I don't (normally) use probe cores for gathering science, but I do use them for missions that don't require a Kerbal, like sending a refueling tanker out to a planet / moon or docking parts to a space station. I know it's bad form to leave debris in orbit on purpose, but a lot of times when I'm building things in orbit it's easier to just release whatever isn't part of the final product and not have to bring a Kerbal back down to the ground each time I take a piece up. Satellites I sometimes put up or bring down just as a role-playing mission since I don't use any mods that require it, unless you count the ones I mention below. I just thought it would be interesting to design them.

I just recently started using SCANsat and Kethane, I almost always put those sensors on probe cores rather than manned ships because it's a simpler launch.

Edited May 13, 2014 by Duke23

[FlyingKerbal64]

I'm on sandbox and have made 10 satellites (with cheats). It's for the same reason the game was made, to simulate real life and/or just be for fun.

Also, I like watching the navball wobble and "pretending" kerbals need it for their computer to play ksp and on it they will make a satellite for kerb- oh inception

Edited April 23, 2016 by FlyingKerbal64
cuz i can

[ghpstage]

On career mode the low weight, low cost and SAS modes not being tied to experience are pretty handy.

So they allow lower tech to go further (interplanetary probes with no building upgrades!), they are great for cheaper 'manning' of long term manning for refuelling tugs, interplanetary tugs, stations and make are particularly excellent for early rescue missions. They are also something of a necessity for satellite contracts.

 

**Doh, this had been necroed from last year...

Edited April 23, 2016 by ghpstage

[Renegrade]

Old posts are old.  A lot as changed since 2014; there are contracts (as mentioned above), plus there's no reason to send a kerbal along to do an ISRU scan, that's best done with a probe.  Also, probe-core-enhanced ships don't require a pilot-class kerbal for SAS (unless the core is the stayputnik), and can be operated entirely unmanned if needed.  Lander ran out of fuel in a stable orbit but can't get back to the station?  Maneuver the station out to the lander instead!

One thing that hasn't changed though: If you're new to the game, probes are a great way to try various things out.  They're lighter than manned vessels (and thus less expensive OR have more delta-v, or a mix of the two), and if you crash it.. Eh.  No biggie, nobody died.  When I first started out, I tried out things like landings with probe cores first to avoid killing kerbals.