Stupid things you've made to do missions in career mode

[Brofessional]

I had to test a jet engine landed on Eve.

[CalculusWarrior]

Nothing terribly crazy yet, but in order to fulfil the velocity requirements for some contracts I've found myself strapping many, many SRBs to rockets.

[BMBender]

My favorites so far are fire off an SRB(the NASA part one) at 73k on a suborbital trajectory. My next fav is fire off an SRB while splashed down. JPL weeps.

Edited July 18, 2014 by BMBender

[magnemoe]

I had to test a jet engine landed on Eve.

http://i.imgur.com/NYipCqtl.jpg

That is just priceless,

[magnemoe]

Nothing terribly crazy yet, but in order to fulfil the velocity requirements for some contracts I've found myself strapping many, many SRBs to rockets.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3913/14702184463_bf8e425b6c_o.png

I tend to use suborbital probes for them, far smaller and that sort of tests are dangerous.

[Sky_walker]

I tend to use suborbital probes for them, far smaller and that sort of tests are dangerous.

Me too.

Overenigeering finally become a sin and something that you need to watch for.

Which is good Means less whackjobs and more realism.

Besides - it fits perfectly inline with my gameplay style I suddenly feel like an awesome player reading reports from all these other people running into huge issues with managing their finances

[possum]

I have been testing srb's with no fuel in them. They are much liter that way.

[KerbMav]

I really do not know if I would like Squad to refine the procedurals leading to these unique contracts - or to just love them.

But landing this, firing it upside down and returning/recovering the whole thing just seemed more... Kerbal.

So? To go BACK from where you came you HAVE to burn in the OTHER direction, every child KNOWS that!

/Hermione-impression

[BMBender]

I really do not know if I would like Squad to refine the procedurals leading to these unique contracts - or to just love them.

hmm I can definitely see a point some time in the future for me where the level of stupid begins to switch from fun and novel, to dumb and wonky. I don't think it's bad per se, but I can just tell it's going to get under my skin sooner or later. At that point I suspect I'll switch to a science career save and DLoad Mission Controller. Thanks Squad for the sci career option that's gonna really save me some burn out on this one.

[Pirke]

I'm still waiting for the mission "orbit the sun while at a minimum distance of 100km of any spacecraft"

[Renegrade]

Another dumb one, for me at least, was to test the small gears (plane gears we all love to use) in water/splash down. Added the plane capsule T400 fuel tank Lv-909 4 wheels and 3 basic solar panels then slowly thrust my way to and into the water, tested and returned back to runway for 100% return on all parts and fuel.

I had one of those splashdown gear things, and I started to build a very small, very silly looking rocket to just splash down next to KSC... but then I realized my first tier science plane had landing gear on it already, so I said 'screw it' and taxied it to the water and gently splooshed in.

It looked something like this:

(Recreation. No science planes were harmed in the making of this image)

It had some other splashdown test, which I'd attached to the top of the plane temporarily..I forget what it was though, some sort of engine test (like 24-77 or ant or such)

EDIT: One thing I've noticed is that the LF-only fuel tanks seem to be a lot lighter than before...

At one point I'd done this test as well:

That's a splashdown test for the rockomax decoupler and an LV-T45 engine..

You'd think splashdowns would be mostly about capsules and probes designed for water landings...

[Moonfrog]

interesting point, I've never actually tried to land in water and then take off again in water. If you had oceans on another planet, maybe that would be a good test. Certainly always tried to do a safe landing to land on land usually.

I suppose if u wanted to build a seaplane it is quite useful. I wonder if these contracts exist due to some future ideas they have for implementing stuff. Like sea landing gear. It would only be a single part but would open up different kind of plane. Wouldn't have to always hope for land on re-entry with a spaceplane, u would have a choice, land or sea.

Personally I would like an anchor for sloped landing on mun mountains.

[KerbMav]

You'd think splashdowns would be mostly about capsules and probes designed for water landings...

This would then require a routine in the contract creation to only pair jet engines with planets having an atmosphere, "splash down" with parts containing a command MODULE and planets with liquid something etc.

[Arran]

I wouldn't call these "stupid" things but perhaps just "Kerbal" things.

That said, my favorite so far is testing jet engines on Mun. I can imagine afterwards that Bill turned to Bob and said, "See, I told you it wouldn't work!"

Yup, i loved this one, at first i was like of, WTF, then i thought about it, and yes, makes sence in a Kerbal kinda way, without a good test they never will know for sure it woudnt work

Some contracts are borderline insanity that make you really think out of the box, what i really can appriciate

[vexx32]

My favorites so far are fire off an SRB(the NASA part one) at 73k on a suborbital trajectory. My next fav is fire off an SRB while splashed down. JPL weeps.

I remember having to test the SLS engine cluster/fuel tank part splashed down. I had to take a few attempts at lugging it to the nearby ocean to do it; my control authority on that build was shocking.

[geb]

I have mostly been ignoring the testing contracts, and going straight for the exploration ones.

The KSP reddit had this excellent engineering test contract though:

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/2b0bc9/contracts_bug/

[BMBender]

heh @geb you need export Launchpads just to do that one

[Fingal]

Here's how I test a solid booster from the launchpad and still recover everything else.

[Chewy]

Anytime I see a contract for "landed on Kerbin", I just stick it on a girder segment (with a probe core of course) held in launch clamps and fire it up without releasing the clamps. You get 100% recovery with nothing leaving the ground and very little time invested. I don't think you even need to use fuel for the engines.

[boa3532]

Just remember... you dont HAVE to do every contract. There's a big red x next to the green checkmark. Hit it and say next contract please.

That said... sometimes the contracts sound so stupid, your curiosity gets the betterf of you.... happened to me a few times.

[Torham234]

I love how from time to time I just need to test an engine on the launchpad. Something like that would never happen without the career contracts. In sandbox, there is absolutely no reason to do this:

[firestorm126]

My current launch, its not going so well but the missions i'm trying to do (in one go) are

Test rockomax mainsail in flight over kerbin: 5400-6600m at 360-560m/s

Test TR-2v flight decoupler in flight over kerbin: 20800-27100m at 300-800m/s

Test TR-XL Stack seperator on sub-orbital trajectory: 70800-75300m

Test Rockomax 24-77 on sub-orbital trajectory: 78300-86500m

Test LFB-KR-1x2 whilst orbiting kerbin: 80300-96600m

Test LV-N Atomic Rocket whilst orbiting Kerbin:79900-81200m

With this rocket my plan was start the centre mainsail in flight, but turns out hitting 360m/s by 5400m is extremely difficult (even with a much smaller craft)

Then the rest should be quite simple.

Once i reach orbit i'm going to use the LFB-KR's at the high orbit and then use them to lower my orbit so i can use the Atomic rocket.

But at the moment my design is seriously flawed... maybe i should go for a less kerbal design

[Torham234]

I am saving up most of those "Test in flight at altitude X" for when I can build planes. Some of the parts have crazy test windows that are very difficult to hit with just rocketry parts. You end up just wasting money.

[firestorm126]

I am saving up most of those "Test in flight at altitude X" for when I can build planes. Some of the parts have crazy test windows that are very difficult to hit with just rocketry parts. You end up just wasting money.

Everything can be solved with more boosters!!

[boolybooly]

Here is one I did today having regrettably accepted a subtly difficult procedural parachute test after forgetting to read the fine print I had failed to complete it on my first orbital mission so I had to complete it with a bespoke ship to get it off my books. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to combine it with a likewise subtly tricky engine test. It took about 5 tries with this, first a T45 test at high speed 330m/s at 7200 m to 8600m had about 3 secs to fire it as I was accelerating, then I used the T45 to provide attitude control for a power dive at about 12km to test the radial chutes at over 460m/s. I was surprised it held together as well as it did, but I kept fluffing the test windows. Got there in the end though

Edited July 18, 2014 by boolybooly