Testing parts not unlocked yet

[Hund]

Not sure if people know but you can accept contracts for testing parts that you haven't unlocked in the tech tree in career mode and the part will show up in the VAB/SPH for testing as experimental. Just did 2 tests at 206 science and over 800k each. Really rolling in the cash now. I haven't even landed on the Mun yet. So it really pays to keep an eye out for those contracts.

-Cheers

[Anquietas314]

I'm not sure if this really counts as a tutorial, but those are meant to go in the subforum. I'll just add that the huge Kerbodyne engine and the toroidal aerospike are both easy, well-paid ones for suborbital trajectories, as is the rapier engine to a lesser degree.

[Kerba Fett]

The fact that they "loan" you the part to be tested can work in your favor. Most contracts have a pretty long completion time so you can just keep using the borrowed part for a while if you don't need the payout and the part is useful. Of course this worked better before they started to limit the number of contracts you can have active.

[Anquietas314]

The fact that they "loan" you the part to be tested can work in your favor. Most contracts have a pretty long completion time so you can just keep using the borrowed part for a while if you don't need the payout and the part is useful. Of course this worked better before they started to limit the number of contracts you can have active.

It's worth considering that if you have a lot of active contracts, you don't get many (if any) new ones, even with a fully upgraded mission control (far cheaper than top tier R&D)