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Map view, click the area. Can make it show up on the navball then.
No contradiction.
Be at 300km. Be on a suborbital trajectory.
Just don't do a proper burn, so your Pe doesn't rise above... not sure if you can raise it above 0m? It definitely can't go above 70km, not sure if it has to be below ground.
I generally recommend avoiding contracts that ask you to go to a particular location. Altitude and speed, fine, or even going to a particular planet or moon is fine, but going to a particular location is a pain, in part because it's not at all clear how close is close enough.
Sub-orbital at 300 km isn't a contradiction. Just go straight up until you reach 300 km. If you don't thrust to the side, you won't reach a stable orbit.
If it's worth anything, the reason many of us are here to try and answer questions like yours is that we, too, have experienced the stark contrast of knowing there is much to enjoy in KSP but it can be VERY frustrating at times and VERY non-intuitive!!! Don't give up.
One vein of thought about contracts is that they are apparently pseudo-random, that is, it mixes a part with planetary body with a profile and spits it out whether it makes any sense of not. Mostly they do not, but hey, Kerbals just gonna' sit around and eat snacks all day if you don't give 'em something to do... but I digress. Point here being that contracts are not individually assessed for all their nuances and so some are next to impossible to complete, so there's that. (Stay away from those...)
Many of the contracts really require reading the 'fine print'. If you are looking for the 'fine print', of course, you won't find it because it is written in the Big Book of Tribal Knowledge (BBoTK), which in your & my case, is these forums (among other sites)! A lot of good information here, although sometimes ya gotta have a little tribal knowledge to know what is good and bad advice...
Re: Your Contract. Very doable. A 300,000m sub-orbital contract simply means the Ap needs to rise to 300,000m but then you will immediately plummet back to Kerbin - the BBoTK will tell you that suborbital means the Pe may NOT be higher than 70,000m. To do that simply means you need to only use enough thrust to go, literally, straight up and cut off engine thrust when the PROJECTED height is 300,000m - which will be indicated in the lower left of your flight screen (I can't remember the formal name for that section but the "anticipated" Ap and Pe values can be seen here; simply stop thrust when the Ap value is what you want. Here again there are slight nuances, but I'll try not to overexplain. Uh, more than I already have...)
The BBoTK might also tell you that, as opposed to orbital missions where your re-entry speed will start around 2300 m/s and a gradual re-entry will likely not exceed any 'G' limits, your plummet from 300,000m could / will likely result in a VERY steep reentry that could be fatal, so you might have a few other things to work out besides just going up. (Possible solutions to reentry might be saving a little thrust to slow your speed as you get close to reentry, or actually "slightly" circularizing the orbit so that you reenter a little more gradually, and so on.
Finally, take every 'learning opportunity' to, well, learn. Ultimately, that's the joy of the game/simulation. Rocket science is, kinda, you know, "Rocket Science"!
[Edit: Right about the time you're about to put a blunt object through your computer screen, stop and watch this video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFI8ZALs4g
Your first contracts are "take readings....". This is because one of the first things you will pick will be taking a reading for kerbin that you get as a starter job. That and launch first vehicle.
The taking reading jobs can be seriously tedious.. before you accept them you can check the tracking station and it should have them marked so you can see where they are. I totally stopped doing any not near KSC itself... personally I don't enjoy flying a plane for hours.
The more you take a type of job the more it will tend to give you them.
For tourists they will only want to go where you have taken a kerbal. You can keep all your tourists sub orbital only by not taking a kerbal into full orbit. You can then make money off easy tourist jobs while you send out unmanned probes / relays for science. Taking a satellite someplace will not trigger the tourist AI to go there.
Personally I don't mod so I don't auto dock and dislike docking in orbit. I pass on all the jobs for rescue from orbit etc or docking in orbit.
You can do a few things to make it easier on yourself. When you set up a game or hitting esc and getting difficulty options you can remove any penalty for declining a job.. this lets you cycle the jobs faster rather than waiting days for new jobs to come up.
Also if you get stuck in a broken job or something you can use Alt F12 and auto-complete the job to clear it from your queue.
I still have a problem wiith collecting science though. Let's say I have 10 science experiements available to do in 20 different biomes. I think that is a fair estimate at this early stage of the game. That's 200 different experiement biome permutations. Just trying to find the biomes seems daunting unless there is map that I don't know about. Even with a map, it seems like quite a job. While I found a list of the experiments I've done, I cannot find a list that needs to be done. That makes planning science hard for me. Any more ideas? Is there an easy and organized way to complete science without just doing x here and y there?
If you're not adverse to googling, if you look at the KSP wiki for a certain planet or moon it will usually have a biome map on there. Or, if you google something like, "KSP Kerbin Biomes", you'll find it fairly easily. They have changed over time, double check you have the most recent one.
If you want to do it all in house you can get one of the probes with the biome scanning function and throw it on a satellite to see the biomes for a specific place. Once you're in orbit you can bring up KerbNet and display the biomes. You can also place down a waypoint on the biomes you want to do experiments in.
To find out what you've already done you can go to your research building back at the KSC and then click in the top left for the Archives button. That will show you what you've done in what biomes.
Also, building a mobile processing lab and plonking a couple of decent level scientist kerbals into it (along with a good antenna and a lot of electricity if you're far from Kerbin) will give you more science. You can even more than double up on your science - each experiment can be returned to Kerbin once for science. It can also then researched again once in each new lab.
Ie, if you collect temperature from a biome. You can return that to Kerbin. Then put a copy of that in 2 different labs and they'll both process it. But, one lab can't process 2 of the same set of results. Labs work best on the planet you get the info from. I think it's like 10% less in orbit but just one or two labs will max out your science pretty quickly.
Temp check on kerbin I think are only low altitude per biome.
KSC has a bunch of biomes, one at each building, flag pole. Space plane hanger has two.
The mountain near KSC ... KSC sits on the Shore biome. Grasslands and Highlands and Mountains can all be obtained by flying to the mountains. Just past and to the left of the mountains is a patch of Desert you can get as well. A nice sample of most of the biomes near the space center. The only ones for Kerbin you would need then are the poles ones and Badlands.
One of the best sources of science I found was the gravity meter... High and low orbit readings for each biome and they are worth a decent amount. Typically I aim for unlocking it as soon as I can for putting on satellites I send out.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2052889241
Put in a Scientist and they can reset the goo and science jr at each stop.
Also good to upgrade the astronaut complex and R&D so you can get surface samples and EVA reports as well.
Oh speaking of EVA reports.. you can get them for each biome in low orbit as well.
Note - low orbit is between 70k and 250K for Kerbin. Each heavenly body will have its own range and it varies quite a bit.
Here is a basic space center biome map. I posted some comments adding some things they missed but it will give you a basic idea of where they are.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2278524291
First, you want to build a vehicle that can do all of the relevant experiments. Then when you land, you do all of the experiments at once, and don't have to keep track of which experiments you've done and which you haven't.
In most places, you can also have your lander hop from one biome to another. On some moons, it's easy to go from orbit to landing in every biome and then back to orbit without refueling. On others, you'll have to refuel to do that, but you can still hop between a few biomes before returning to orbit to refuel.
Here's a lander that I used in several places on my most recent playthrough:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2246117008
It features:
1) all of the science experiments that can be done while landed in a vacuum
2) a good probe core to get you SAS 3 and KerbNet access
3) a command pod to store one scientist kerbal, with all science experiments that need to be reset within range of the door
4) a single nuclear power generator, to ensure that you never run out of power
5) several experiment storage units, so that you can pick up several copies of the data
6) an antenna for a robust connection to CommNet, though it is only intended to connect to a relay in orbit, and not all the way back to Kerbin.
7) a low to the ground design so that you can land nearly anywhere without falling over
8) plenty of delta-v and acceleration to be easy to maneuver and land
9) a docking port that can be used to refuel
I'm not saying that you should use that lander exactly. I am saying that those are the features that you probably want in an endgame lander. Planets or moons with stronger gravity or an atmosphere demand some design changes, but you still want the features above.
That allows you to be in orbit, then turn on CommNet to see which biomes are where, then land in the biome you want. Do all of the experiments, gather your data in one experiment storage unit, and then reset the science jr. and mystery goo. Then repeat all the experiments again to get another copy, and so forth. Then take off and fly to another biome and repeat.
To pick up all of the science in space for different biomes, just get into a polar orbit and wait until you pass over each biome, then do the experiments above it. Gravity and EVA report are the only ones that vary by biome, so you can do the rest just once and only repeat those for each biome. EVA report only varies by biome when low in space, not high in space.
If the problem is getting enough science to unlock all of the parts, then I see that as going in five stages:
1) Do little things around Kerbin until you unlock the thermometer, barometer, and EVA report.
2) Launch a manned vehicle to go orbit Minmus and then Mun, and do the mystery goo, science jr., thermometer, barometer, and EVA report both high and low in space over Minmus, Mun, and Kerbin. Also do the EVA report low in space separately for each biome. There is no need for this vehicle to land. That gets you enough science to unlock the rest of the science gear.
3) Launch a manned vehicle to go orbit Minmus and then Mun, just like the previous one. This time, do the gravmax, telescope, and magnetometer experiments, since you didn't have them before. The gravity experiment gets you a ton of science because it's repeatable for each biome. This lets you unlock a lot of other stuff, and allows you to build a nice lander.
4) Now that you can build a nice lander, build a lander and send it to Minmus. Go land in every biome, and do all of the experiments while landed in each biome. Then return all of that science to Kerbin. That gets you enough science to unlock just about everything that matters.
5) Now that you've got basically everything unlocked, go to Mun and land in every biome. You'll need to refuel, so either bring mining gear or leave some fuel in space where you can have the lander dock to refuel. Once you finish Mun, you'll have enough science to unlock the entire tech tree unless you set the science generation rate to be really low.
Note that steps 2, 3, and 4 are each just one vehicle. Step 5 is just one launch, though it likely involves multiple vehicles strapped together for that one launch, and then some docking and refueling.
missions to the moons of kerbin or to other planets yield WAY more science points than any of those stupid early game "get readings from some random point on the other side of kerbin" contracts.
the most important skills you have to learn in this game is
- efficient launching techniques (gravity turn) - so you can get your payload to space without having to use expensive overengineered monstrosities
- effocient orbital maneuvering - you you don't need expensive overengineered spacecraft to get people to the moons or other planets.
it really doesn't matter whether you ever figure out how to solve the survey missions within kerbins atmosphere or how to get kerbal tourists on a suborbital trip. you get way more money and science from simply landing on minmus and mun and unlocking missions for those bodies. they are also more interesting.
once you learned the basics and get good at the 2 key skills, you'll realize that you don't even need much tech to get to that portion of the game. you can easily get the research points to unlock the useful techs for your first moon landing just from the basic "get to orbit" sort of missions. and once you can land on the mun or minmus, you can rake in several hundred points from every biome (and they have MANY biomes). so you can easily fill out the whole tech tree without even needing to leave the kerbin system.
As for tourists, I make as much money as possible with tourists before interacting with any other planetary body because as soon as you do, they will be asking you to do much more elaborate itineraries than is worth the trouble. Sure you can send them on separate flights, but the time involved to land them on the Mun verses simply orbiting Kerbin with boatloads of kerbals feels like a chore.
you literally just launch the thing, set up 2-3 maneuvers and you're done. once you get the hang of orbital maneuvers you can do the whole thing in 10 minutes or so and it earns quite a lot of cash compared to the very little money you spend on the hardware and the very low time investment.