Survey Contracts

[MoridinUK]

HI all,

I'm not new to kerbal but I haven't played much at all. Now the .90 is here I'm very happy but I need help. I need to do some survey's the location is south and west of the launch pad, and I need to be below 18200 meter.

I'm tying to shoot up a long way and then navigate to come down over the target, but I just can't get it right. If I select the destination as a navigation target, I only get vectors if I'm way way to high to get back to under 18200.

Any suggestions or help on either how to plan the parabolic flight right, or whether it may be easier to try to drop from orbit on to it, I think I have the tech that I could just about manage that.

The thing is I can't make much money else wise, the other contracts don't offer more than it costs to run the tests and as I can't afford what I need to grab science from surface samples I'm a bit stuck. I could unlock radial parachutes, then I could probably be sure to save goo experiments!

Any links to videos that could help would be great, but I don't think I've unlock flight planning so I have no maneuver nodes.

Please help a noob!

Edited December 31, 2014 by MoridinUK
Answered

[Anquietas314]

I'm tying to shoot up a long way and then navigate to come down over the target, but I just can't get it right. If I select the destination as a navigation target, I only get vectors if I'm way way to high to get back to under 18200.

You should be able to see the navigation target immediately after setting it from the map view. It may be far below the horizon though, depending on how far away it is - the navball doesn't seem to take the curvature of the planet into account

As for how to get there (assuming you don't have plane parts yet), you should basically start off as you would to get into orbit, if that orbit passed over your target... but stop short when your landing location (may take some practice to guess this correctly) is where it needs to be.

Hope this helps

[MoridinUK]

So out into orbit and then try to get it to come back down over the target? I wish I could unlock the maneuver nodes first to see how to change the orbit so the ship passes over the target, before firing the deceleration..

[Anquietas314]

No no, you don't need to go all the way to orbit (unless your target's on the other side of the planet.... in which case go for it ). Just find the target on the map, and guess the heading you need to fly at (0/360 = north, 90 = east, 180 = south, 270 = west, etc) to get there. once you start turning over in that direction during the "gravity turn" part of your flight, the marker should be visible on the navball if it's below the horizon. The part of your orbit that intersects the planet should tell you roughly where you'll land (there's also the planet's rotation and atmospheric drag to worry about, but that's where practice comes in).

In general, the navball in surface mode is more reliable than the orbit prediction on the map though. Just make sure your prograde vector is either above or below your target marker, depending on how far away from the target you are and whether you need to be above or below the required altitude

[bandi94]

You should do the other contracts and the survey with ABOVE X meter. You will be able to get enough science point to unlock gears and the basic jet engine , so you will be able to construct a small jet plane , from there is very easy to do the BELOVED contracts.

At least this is the way i made it few hours ago, i started the career mode again from 0 in 0.9

[capi3101]

HI all,

I'm not new to kerbal but I haven't played much at all. Now the .90 is here I'm very happy but I need help. I need to do some survey's the location is south and west of the launch pad, and I need to be below 18200 meter.

I'm tying to shoot up a long way and then navigate to come down over the target, but I just can't get it right. If I select the destination as a navigation target, I only get vectors if I'm way way to high to get back to under 18200.

Any suggestions or help on either how to plan the parabolic flight right, or whether it may be easier to try to drop from orbit on to it, I think I have the tech that I could just about manage that.

The thing is I can't make much money else wise, the other contracts don't offer more than it costs to run the tests and as I can't afford what I need to grab science from surface samples I'm a bit stuck. I could unlock radial parachutes, then I could probably be sure to save goo experiments!

Any links to videos that could help would be great, but I don't think I've unlock flight planning so I have no maneuver nodes.

Please help a noob!

Hmm......well, let's start with a) what techs have you unlocked, what all have you done so far to earn science, and c) how much money do you currently have? Where are the survey sites in relationship to KSC?

I played with FinePrint in 0.25 and so I've got a fair amount of experience with the "new" contract types. For aerial survey missions, bandi94 is right; an airplane is the way to go if you have the necessary technologies. If not though, there's no need to fret; you may have accepted the contract but you do have some time to get it done, and in the meantime you can attend to other contracts that are more in tune with your current tech level.

When you do go to do them, I'd suggest going high - especially if the sites are halfway around Kerbin. High altitude = high speed, especially if you're using Turbojets. When you're approaching the site, descend to where you need to be and wait for the message to move on to the next site. If you overshoot, throttle back to around 1/3, descend as rapidly as you can manage, come around, throttle back up and ascend to where you need to be - this is as inefficient as it sounds, so try not to do it too often if you can.

Edited December 18, 2014 by capi3101

[Anquietas314]

capi3101: it's important to consider that you start off only able to accept 2 contracts at a time, and there's a penalty for cancelling them (which strangely is not always the same as the "failure" penalty); MoridinUK could already have 2 active contracts and insufficient funds to upgrade mission control. These contracts are perfectly doable with inexpensive rockets early game, provided you understand the navball, and in my experience the "above" ones are no harder or easier than the "below" ones, unless you're flying a plane equipped with basic jets which struggles to get above the ~20km markers.

[Rusty6899]

I have only done one survey mission, but I did find it quite tedious. I was using rockets as I'm pretty sketchy with planes. I just went vertically up to about 10km, pitched over and flew most of the way between 20-30km, then made small adjustments to make sure I was at the right level when I passed over the target. I'm pretty sure the missions would be much easier with planes, as I had to use one rockey for each target.

[Anquietas314]

Rusty6899: you want to go a decent bit higher than 20-30km if you're using rockets. At that altitude, drag slows you down pretty fast; 40-50km is more suitable, higher if it's very far away . But yes, they are easier with planes (until you get ones that require you to land on a bloody mountain.... or land 5 km away and get out and walk)

[Starman4308]

Two things to consider.

#1: The planet is spinning under you as you fly. You're going to have to aim eastwards of your target, or you're going to miss the target.

#2: The Trajectories mod, when it gets updated to 0.90, can give you quite accurate landing predictions, accounting for things like planetary rotation.

[MoridinUK]

I have some science about 60, but unsure of what moves to make has made me cautious about where to spend it, I have unlocked the tech with the bigger booster, but that and the first tech with the separator are the only ones unlocked... I've learnt alot now though but I still can't get the darn thing to reach the target. I think I need to scale back my rocket to make life easier, I always run out of fuel. The survey site is SSW from KSC so it's against rotation but it isn't far at all, however, the moment my rocket loses power the direct etc changes and I drift off. I'll preserver though.. flying with my vector just about or below target on the nav ball, kinda works but rotation messes it up. I thank the great something they decided not to add wind....

So i have minimal tech, only two contracts allowed, and I seem to have done most of them, only realizing afterwards that burning off three boosters to fire a forth in the name of a contract was bad business... I'm a bit poor, oh and I blasted through most of the height contracts by accident... a restart is calling to me...

[Anquietas314]

#1: The planet is spinning under you as you fly. You're going to have to aim eastwards of your target, or you're going to miss the target.

Alternatively, you could also use the navball in "surface" mode to overcome that problem - it includes planet rotation (though of course it's not a perfect solution).

#2: The Trajectories mod, when it gets updated to 0.90, can give you quite accurate landing predictions, accounting for things like planetary rotation.

If you don't mind mods, Mechjeb also gives very nice landing predictions, and is already updated (however, in career mode it's also quite restrictive early game.)

[Anquietas314]

MoridinUK: how expensive are your rockets, and what difficulty are you playing on? Roughly speaking your rocket only needs to cost ~8-10k funds to get to orbit, although that doesn't leave a huge margin for error. Plus if you're on moderate or below, or just turned it back on in hard difficulty, "revert flight" is your friend

[FlyingPete]

I just built a small jet plane to do several aerial survey missions in one go- they were in close proximity to each other and a mixture of above/below 19000m. I didn't have landing gear yet so I stuck some legs on the tail, launched vertically and landed by parachute.

[WanderingKid]

Since you mention not sure where to spend your research points, I find that Survey Missions are later than Satellite missions, simply because of how the tech tree is currently laid out. Though if you're really good at things, you can pull off some really amazing low-tech planes, using rockets for height and then gliding.

However, for the rest of us humans, satellites are where you should go first. You want to aim for Stayputnik and solar panels. This lets you start achieving satellite deliveries (keep in mind you want a reaction wheel for these, Stayputnik doesn't have internal gyros... or SAS).

To make your life easier for these, you next want the 48-7S (upgrade from the LV-909) to keep delivery weight down and make it a lot easier to dV out to Munar/Minmus orbits with them, and then you want OKTO for SAS. You can put together (usually) a satellite that weighs about as much as the pod alone does, and once it's in orbit you can get it where you need it.

Note: YMMV. I'm not a big fan of planes until you've at least opened up the basic aerodynamics package with the jet engine in it.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I usually just use a plane to get those that are both on the local continent and require you to be below the given altitude. The ones that want you above can be done from orbit unless it's a barometric scan.

[MoridinUK]

Well I've been trying to learn a bit more and installed the engineer mod. However, I been advised I want to set my rockets to a 1.61 TWR by limiting thrust. I've done this and I seem to get much higher, but I don't understand what this value is, so unsure how to use it in the future.

The survey missions are driving me nuts lol... I haven't seen any of the satellite missions yet. REvert flight is my friend but I feel i'm using it way to often. I started in Normal mode so this should be easy.

How do I set the nav ball to surface mode? OR does it do that automatically? Is that why the petrograde and retrograde icons appear on it above a certain height?

[WanderingKid]

Well I've been trying to learn a bit more and installed the engineer mod. However, I been advised I want to set my rockets to a 1.61 TWR by limiting thrust. I've done this and I seem to get much higher, but I don't understand what this value is, so unsure how to use it in the future.

TWR = Thrust to Weight Ratio.

Short form: TWR = Thrust/(mass*gravity (9.81 for Kerbin)) Each engine has a Kn rating, this is KiloNewtons. So, for example, the LV-909 has 50 Kn, the LV-T45 has 200. Let's assume your rocket, for round numbers, is 20 tons.

At rest on Kerbin, your rocket has 9.81*mass downforce at sea level. This is due to gravity. At TWR = 1, you will 'float' but go nowhere. You've merely negated the downforce. To go upwards, you need positive TWR. Your 20ton rocket has (roughly, if we round gravity to 10) 200 newtons of downforce. That means the LV-T45 can only make you hover, and the LV-909 has no chance of getting you anywhere.

TWR of 1.6 - 1.8 basically means you'll get moving without going past the terminal velocity of the atmosphere (which happens ~TWR 2.1) at full throttle. You'll gain more TWR as you burn fuel, so you build in the vig.

If you want more detailed discussions on it, check the wiki.

The survey missions are driving me nuts lol... I haven't seen any of the satellite missions yet. REvert flight is my friend but I feel i'm using it way to often. I started in Normal mode so this should be easy.

For satellite you need a probe core and solar panels. Open those up and you should get the missions.

[zilfondel]

I've been doing these as suborbital flights, hopping to around 90 - 150 km into space, then dropping practically straight down onto the marker. It's hard. I fail typically 3 or 4 times before making each one under the 18km altitude limit - the "go above" ones are 10x easier.

Try to build a rocket using SRB's (cheaper) and land on your liquid rocket so that you don't destroy it, so should save money.

[hypermetric]

It takes a little skill (lots of tries) but using a rocket to complete low altitude survey contracts is not impossible. I find if I drop down from the upper atmosphere as close to normal as practical I don't have to worry about air resistance screwing up my trajectory. I go for pin point longitude and aim a little east on latitude. Anyways its good practice for latter when you get base construction contracts. I do wish there was a way to see the waypoints on the ground (not map view), especially for the EVA contracts.

[MoridinUK]

So I can get up to a TWR of around 2 without wasting fuel against terminal velocity? Once I get some cash, what should I aim for, Getting Jeb out of the pod in an eva, and maybe ground samples? Or launching bigger rockets?

[Anquietas314]

I do wish there was a way to see the waypoints on the ground (not map view), especially for the EVA contracts.

There is, at least for when you're piloting a ship/rover: set navigation on the map view, then follow the marker on your navball Obviously that doesn't work for when you're actually on EVA, but if you bring a plane or rover you can get close enough to the marker, stop, get out, then do the report

So I can get up to a TWR of around 2 without wasting fuel against terminal velocity? Once I get some cash, what should I aim for, Getting Jeb out of the pod in an eva, and maybe ground samples? Or launching bigger rockets?

Since you're using kerbal engineer anyway, add the "atmospheric efficiency" and "terminal velocity" readouts to one of the lists (I use surface) - they're in the "surface" list in edit mode. Ideally you want to have efficiency as close to 100% as possible (i.e. neither above or below; below means you're not going fast enough, and above means you're wasting fuel fighting drag). The best way I've found to do that is launch with a TWR of about 2, then throttle back as efficiency nears/goes over 100%, then just try to keep it at 100% from there.

[MoridinUK]

I can't throttle back a booster huh?

Is that an edit in game or a file?

Edited December 20, 2014 by MoridinUK

[Anquietas314]

I can't throttle back a booster huh?

Technically you can, in the VAB. Right click it and set the throttle limiter (this is a really good way to get a single booster up to 45km!)

[MoridinUK]

OMG *doeslittledance*

edit: oh I meant while in flight.... lol

Edited December 20, 2014 by MoridinUK