No one

I launched the Explorer, a manned mission to Eeloo and Moho. It will go to Eeloo first, drop a lander, then go on to Moho and drop another lander. I'm doing it this way because I can*. Also I've switched revert off. Unfortunately, during the launch a falling outer stage collided with the rocket from an inner stage and for a while I thought that I would not go to space today. After a few seconds of going "Oh .... Oh .... how do I save the Kerbals?" (The return vehicles were separate to the landers they started in and the landers lacked parachutes), I realized that all was not lost and that I could decouple the rocketless tank and the tank+rocket on the other side and maintain symmetry without losing the entire stage. I then did so, got to space, ran out of fuel on the launch stage but fortunately not before my periapsis was at 56km, high enough that my transfer stage was more than capable of raising it into space. It's now chilling in orbit because Eeloo is currently in a ....ty position and by waiting 7 years I'll save over 1km/s delta-v. I don't want to just timewarp though, so I'm currently planning a manned Duna landing. My first manned Duna landing in fact, previously I had been scared of the atmosphere. *Probably I think. I might not have sufficient delta-v.

Definitely Dres. It's where I made my first manned landing outside of Kerbin's SOI, and also I always seem to have a launch window there whenever I want to go. Reason why: Process of elimination. Moho: Takes a ....ton of delta-v to get to, high surface gravity. Orbital rendezvous is really helpful on Moho but unnecessary on Dres/Eeloo. Eve: Obvious reasons. Gilly: The gravity's so low that you wish it were higher. Also the topography makes landing annoying. Duna: Scary atmosphere. I still haven't done a manned duna landing. Ike: Would probably also have been a good candidate but a moon is just sort of less impressive than a (dwarf) planet. Also it seems sort of wimpy to go to Duna and only land on its moon. Laythe: Scary atmosphere Tylo: Obvious reasons. Vall: Same as Ike, but also requires more delta-v to get to. Also, it seems sort of wimpy to go to Jool and then only explore one moon rather than all of them, or at least the easier 3. Bop/Pol: Same as Gilly except easier to intercept, also same problem as Vall. Eeloo: Another good candidate, my second manned landing outside of Kerbin's SOI. Similar to Dres but a slightly higher surface gravity and lots more delta-v to get to.

It's because Ike is so popular. Easy to intercept, easy to land on, can assist when being captured into Duna orbit, can assist when going home. You like Ike*, I like Ike**, everybody likes Ike for president... *Maybe. **Actually I think that Ike is alright but sorta meh. It is much better than Gilly though, which is absolutely horrible. Personally, my favorite astronomical object in KSP is Dres.

Jeb doesn't understand that sometimes, things are supposed to explode. For my first flight of .24, I went into orbit. This required quite a bit of explosive decoupling. Unfortunately for him, Jeb didn't understand that I was using the SRBs as decouplers and he got rather worried when they kept exploding.

It's not about having problems, it's just about trying to make things as cheap as possible because you can. If I wanted I'm sure I'd be able to afford the SLS-asparagus monstrosities I used in .235, but spending funds feels morally wrong. The liquid SLS parts are way more expensive than getting the same thrust would be with rockomax.

SLS is too prohibitively expensive to use in career. It's much cheaper just to make an asparapancake out of mainsails.

Would it be possible for me to find out the truth then stay in the Matrix because I can? I mean, imagine a world where technology was so advanced that robots did everything and humans spent all their time in a computer simulation having fun. Sound nice? Because I think it sounds nice. ... ... Wait a minute, that's the matrix! The robots had a serious PR problem. They should have told the humans about their situation except spun it such that the matrix was a videogame, a simulation for the humans to enjoy while the robots did all the stuff like keeping them alive and stuff. Of course, I'd personally prefer to know if the world I was living in was a lie, but that doesn't mean I'd want to stop living there.

If players are given a choice in what to start off with and there is an attempt to make progression realistic, there should be risk in sending manned missions. At the moment, there isn't much risk in sending a manned capsule on early missions. Slap on a parachute and the Kerbals will pretty much always survive. Making parachutes come later on in the tech tree would be a way to accomplish this and would be easy to implement. (As opposed to reentry physics, which would be less easy to implement and is on the WNTS list)

What if they just took away parachutes until later in the tech tree? (And also added probes to your starting equipment) You would still be able to launch Kerbals to start with, but you'd have to either use retrorockets and learn how to land without parachutes, or accept the reputation loss and Kerbal death. Or you could use probes first.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and have no clue what I am talking about. If it is possible for Squad to give explicit consent to you to use their stuff in youtube videos which bypasses the EULA, wouldn't the FAQ and/or that tumblr post be enough to count as written consent? If Evil Associated does end up taking over Squad and suing you, wouldn't you then be able to point to the blog/tumblr post and say "But they said it was ok!"?

No. If I wanted to replicate what someone else already did then I wouldn't be No one, I'd be someone else. But I'm not someone else, I'm No one. Replicas are annoying because A) They force you to focus on annoying things like looks, and Because they force you to do things in one specific way, and don't allow you to choose how to solve the problem for yourself.

Moon. Because I can*. *Well, I can't, but in that hypothetical scenario then I would be able to.

Maybe. My rockets are pretty reliable. I would add an Abort system if there was no reverting though. Only thing is, getting home. Since realizing that there is massive profit in leaving Kerbals somewhere, I have started doing that. They sit on a planet/moon in a lander can and plant flags when a contract requires it. And that's it. They COULD hypothetically get home, all the landers include a thing capable of getting them home and I don't land Kerbals anywhere I don't know I can return from, but they don't return home because there's no point. Also, I send them home using external command seats. There is no way that the ride home or the reentry is comfortable.

If you work it right you can do everything with Sepratrons. That doesn't mean that all we need are sepratrons. I think that larger SRBs would be useful, in particular wider ones. I mean, yes I can just use 8x symmetry to attach 8 S1s to a rocket, but it would create much less lag if I just had one SRB with the size and power of the rockomax-sized parts.

How is Eve more deadly than other planets/moons? The incredibly thick atmosphere means that parachutes are extremely effective, and depending on what your ship is made of you don't always need them. Getting off is impossible, but those who are there don't die. Of course, I've never sent a Kerbal there because I know I couldn't get them back, so I don't actually know, but I can't see why it would kill anyone. Now Tylo and Jool on the other hand, eat Kerbals for breakfast*. *Actually they've never killed any of my Kerbals for the same reason as Eve. I've never sent anything into Jool's atmosphere other than to aerobrake, and I've never sent anything to Tylo ever. The planet/moon with the highest bodycount in my games would have to be the Mun, because I went there first and several Kerbals died in the process, and also because in my latest playthrough I was careless tried to land on the dark side without lights. That said, that Kerbal was not a part of my space program yet and thus I feel no guilt. (He was trapped in LKO and I had him take a detour to the Mun before going home) Also, in response to the "water therefore life" comment: Water doesn't guarantee life. Plenty of moons and dwarf planets in our solar system have water. We haven't explored them and don't know if they have life, but we don't automatically assume that they have life just because they have water.

I have a systematic naming for what I leave behind, but for the ship which gets there I give it a non-systematic name. For what I leave behind: (Unless otherwise specified, XXX means "The name of the planet/moon it's on/orbiting) (Unless otherwise specified, I/One can be other numbers, I just generally don't put any more than one thing there because that would be pointless) For bases (Ship with cockpit&Kerbal left behind for the purpose of planting flags. All have the capability of getting home): XXX Base One For satellites (Unmanned probe, usually without any method of propulsion, left in orbit for the purpose of getting science near that body): XXX-Sat I For lander probes (Unmanned probe, used when I couldn't return a Kerbal (Eve) and/or I was visiting many things with one ship and didn't feel like making a ship carry 5 manned landers (Jool's moons), similar to the satellite except has RCS thrusters and monopropellant, an accelerometer, abd also if the thing I'm landing on has an atmosphere a barometer and nose cone): XXX-Lander I

You need a Kerbal. Send one on EVA, click/rightclick (I forget which) on the goo, choose "take data", click/rightclick on the lab, choose "store data". (Or, instead of choosing "store data", you can board the lab and the data will be stored there). In addition to the lab being able to store infinite results, a Kerbal on EVA can store infinite results which are why mobile command seats are extremely handy if you don't have a science lab and want to store more than one copy of an experiment's data. (Command pods are 1 result per experiment-biome-situation).

Personally I prefer I-beams to girders for landing. They're easier to place.

All you have to do is plant a flag, any flag. I personally use the NASA flag. You don't have to use the flag of the company. If it did work the way you said it did, technically it would give you a return in the long run but given the existence of the science contracts it really wouldn't be.

You can also do something similar with the "plant flag" missions by just leaving a kerbal there and having them plant a flag every time you get the mission. If you haven't unlocked the thermometer yet you can also use a command pod with a kerbal in it.

What I meant was, it's not an imbalance because it takes so much effort. Furthermore, Squad has explicitly stated that advances on contracts are supposed to make bankruptcy impossible, so I'd say it's working exactly as they said it would.

That seems like a lot of effort. You devote a lot of effort into fraud when you could make friends with the right people and get paid while doing nothing at all. Another way of getting infinite funds: Have a ship with a kerbal, solar panels (Or RTGs would work too I guess), and an antenna in LKO Wait until the contract "Get science from LKO" is offered Do a crew report/EVA report, transmit data Get the reward for completing the contract Profit! If you have a thermometer or gravioli detector, you don't even need a Kerbal. It also works for the following missions: "Plant a flag at X" where X is anywhere you have landed a Kerbal on "Science from X" where X is anywhere you've sent a probe/ship to.

Try a periapsis above 70km. If the periapsis is below 70, it's in the atmosphere so the game doesn't count it as in "orbit".

Why do you need the science lab for those missions? Transmitting data solely for the contract works just as well with reusable stuff like the thermometer/gravioli detector/accelerometer.

3 million funds when most launches take a few 10s of thousands, I don't know how much reputation, 4 ingame years. That said, almost all of those 4 years were spent rescuing a kerbal from solar orbit after I didn't put ion thrusters on a return stage in an attempt to save money but then lacked the delta-v to return to Kerbin. For most of my launches so far I used asparagus (LV-T30s) because of how useful it is, but then I realized how much cheaper SRBs were and have been using them since. I've been to the Mun, Minmus, and Kerbolar orbit. I haven't been to any other planets because I don't like spending money and I know that if I use transfer windows right I really don't need much delta-v at all, but back in .235 I always had massive overkill (To the point where once I didn't even use my interplanetary transfer stage, which was extremely massive, and the launch stage was enough to get to where I was going) and I'm not sure just how little dv I can get away with.