How many Kerbal years to compleat the tech tree?

[JordanL]

Personally I never use career mode, yet at least. I'm waiting till we have budgets and contracts. Then it will be worth it in my opinion.

Untill then, I'll stick to sandbox making weird flying machines!

Use a combination of Mission Controller Extended and Kerbal Construction Time, and you'll probably have a better career mode than Squad releases.

[maltesh]

That's what I meant too. I thought it took ~2 days to get to Mun and ~8 days to get to Minmus. Then of course 2 days and 8 days back respectively.

He's using real (24-hour) days, you're using (6-hour)K-days.

[EdFred]

He's using real (24-hour) days, you're using (6-hour)K-days.

Ahhhhhh. I only do Kerbal time in the Kerbal universe.

[StrandedonEarth]

I was not trying to do it as fast as possible, but:

Finished the tech tree in my current save (upped the difficulty to FAR, DRE, and TAC life support) in 97 days, my fourth time through the tech tree. Once I got my labs in orbit around Kerbin's moons, I launched a Hopper to Minmus, and while that was on route, I launched another Hopper to the Mun. The Mun Hopper hit about 8 or so biomes before the Mun Lab was drained, and went home. Then the Minmus Hopper arrived and did about 6 biomes before the Minmus Lab was drained (it had less fuel stockpiled). All the while I had gravioli probes doing high and low biome sweeps. The Minmus return ship had to burn onto a hyperbolic return path (if Kerbin's atmosphere wasn't in the way, it would have gone interplanetary), shaving 2 kerbal days off the return, to get home before life support ran out.

[problemecium]

For me it's been 87 days and I have one node left with a ship full of the required science on its way back to Kerbin and expected back within a week. I'm pretty sure it could have been done a little faster, too. The key is to launch several missions at once so that you can spend the time while one science mission en route collecting science with another mission.

Also, I strip-mined the Mun and Minmus by parking a station over them with a small lander to go down, grab science, go up, store it, and repeat; then I have another ship go out to the station to grab a bunch of science at once and carry it home for massive profit.

[katateochi]

I recently did the stock tech tree in 38 Kerbin Days

[JordanL]

I was not trying to do it as fast as possible, but:

Finished the tech tree in my current save (upped the difficulty to FAR, DRE, and TAC life support) in 97 days, my fourth time through the tech tree. Once I got my labs in orbit around Kerbin's moons, I launched a Hopper to Minmus, and while that was on route, I launched another Hopper to the Mun. The Mun Hopper hit about 8 or so biomes before the Mun Lab was drained, and went home. Then the Minmus Hopper arrived and did about 6 biomes before the Minmus Lab was drained (it had less fuel stockpiled). All the while I had gravioli probes doing high and low biome sweeps. The Minmus return ship had to burn onto a hyperbolic return path (if Kerbin's atmosphere wasn't in the way, it would have gone interplanetary), shaving 2 kerbal days off the return, to get home before life support ran out.

Wait, with the stock science lab, you can store more than one experiment to return? You can reset your experiments after taking them?

How did I miss that?

[problemecium]

I was actually thinking a few weeks ago about making an "Around the Tech Tree in 80 Days" challenge based on seeing who could clear it the fastest in Kerbal time.