Lost 90,000 kerbal money hiw can I make more easily?

[SRV Ron]

Think of this topic as being useful to all starting Career Contracts for their first time.

Two more hints; While waiting for a launch window to open for Duna, Ike, and Eve, continue contract testing and refining your designs as you unlock more tech. You can then design a low cost contract vehicle for those destinations that will place a lander on the surface while leaving a probe in orbit.

Launch those escape Kerban test at dawn or dusk so their orbits can be used to find the launch dates to use a direct Hoffmen transfer to Eve or Duna thus saving fuel for both contract and manned missions. Combine contracts so the cost of those no return missions is shared among them.

[Thanny]

I started by accepting literally every contract. I then constructed strange contraptions that completed multiple contracts with a single launch, which makes for a high profit ratio, even if you get nothing back from the ship.

Recouping costs outside of the contract pay is more complicated. Without mods, it's not practical to recover any parts that you detach in the atmosphere. So you want to leave as much as possible of the ship intact until orbit, at which point you can use probe cores and enough fuel to de-orbit the stages that are no longer necessary. With enough practice, you can put these stages down right on the runway, getting you 100% of their value back. In general, make good use of SRB's, as they're very cheap for the amount of lift you get out of them, and you won't feel bad about ditching them. With lighter vehicles and adjusted max thrust (to avoid going too fast at too low an altitude), you can get halfway to orbit before touching liquid fuel.

[Bilfr3d]

A good way to get funds to actually run missions:

Accept ALL contracts on offer.

Build a ship that just has tonnes of liquid fuel and eats up your entire budget

Launch said ship. Don't add engines just leave it on the Launchpad.

Go to space centre

Cancel contracts

Recover expensive craft

PROFIT

The ship acts like a bank during the cancelling of the contracts. Because you can't get negative funds.