alphamone

I sent a compact probe to eve that entered the atmosphere with a perapsis of 40 km.(had to cheat a bit due to SOE change glitch, but i changed it back to the same perapsis) By the time the craft had slowed down, the heat shield only had 25ish units of ablator left, given that I entered the atmosphere at 7km per second, I honestly thought the probe was gonna burn up. Unfortunately, it landed near the poles, and all I have a basic solar panels, so it takes forever to get enough charge to transmit my data. I also have an inbound Duna mission piloted by Valentina, and a planned Dres lander in a parking orbit around kerbin almost ready to leave.

A couple of tiny (that make gilly landings look like Mun landings in comparison) moons around Jool or other possible future planets might be nice. An inclined comet or two might be nice to have for higher level challenges.

Set up a ship in a synchronous orbit around Minmus so that during periapsis, it would be a few metres above the surface. Some time later I might try and set it up again so that I can get ground based view of a similar orbit. Also, as I was doing it on an install with NEAR installed (to try it out before putting it on my main install), I tried coming in with a near vertical decent, and was only saved from becoming a crater by the fact that the parachutes seem to be made from superman hair.

I have managed manned returns from Jool (using laythe's orbital velocity makes it far cheaper than Delta-V maps would make you think) and Duna. I would have also returned a manned mission from Gilly (and therefore Eve SOI) but the Kraken ate it during time warp (RIP Doodbro Kerman). If it weren't for my desire to avoid long periods of time warp without doing anything, I'm sure I would have done missions to the other places as well (though I probably would have had to copy a lander for an ever surface return).

Even as someone who still uses stock "aerodynamics" I still think it would be better to just get it over with and do the potential save breakers now rather than later. Though including fairings in the same update would also be a good idea (for people that don't want to launch stuff with cargo bays).

Redesigned my failed attempt at a keliosyncronous probe for a contract (with a 140 weight ton limit due to a level 2 launchpad and limited to the level 1 R&D center) to be a manned lander. According to the Delta-V charts, It should possibly be able to do a Dres return, and possibly even an Eloo return with a perfect launch window. Though given that I almost have enough to upgrade my weight limit, I probably wont take the risk with taking it to Eloo in its current state.

I have found that the part limit restriction has taught me to design far simpler landers. With the rockomax parts unlocked, I managed to build a lander capable of reaching laythe with very efficient areobraking, and can supposedly land on Dres according to delta-v charts. Hopefully I can use science from some planets to upgrade the VAB to use more than 30 parts so I can build proper manned landers.

Saw discussions of the earlier versions ages ago, but I didn't get around to buying it until it was out on steam.

Testing a Kerbodyne KR-2L splashed down on Laythe. I managed to build a rocket to get the engine there for less than the cash advance.

I discovered that six of the eight asparagused boosters on the launcher for my "anywhere but tylo" lander were lv-t45s rather than lv-t30s. I have no idea what the effects it had on the launcher's capabilities (again, it was able to send to the attached unmanned science landers to any location other than tylo), but the issue has been rectified.

Landed my unmanned science lander on Vall, and a modified version (with extra engines to assist with landing) of the same lander on Tylo. I have now landed on all the all the bodies in the stock kerbol system. Also, while organizing my Vall lander's encounter, I accidentally let my Manned lander that was returning from Laythe overshoot its encounter. Thankfully I managed to spot it early enough that I could get another encounter in less than a Kerbin year as it was overdesigned enough to have 4 k/s Delta V remaining after its original encounter was obtained from Laythe orbit.

Launched some unmanned science landers to land on Vall and Tylo, the only bodies I have yet to land on. The Vall lander is unmodified from the design I used for all other landers (though the eve lander used a parachute and later launches had more science instruments on them as I researched them) while the Tylo lander has some extra engines on it to assist in landing. I will almost certainly need to calculate a suicide burn using "simulations" (read F5 and F9 for my tylo lander, though the Vall lander should not be all that difficult to land. Next up, possibly a space station around another body.

Set up my Laythe lander for Kerbin return. By burning when both Laythe and my craft are moving at retrograde, I was able to get it to return for about 1.5k/s delta-v, when the lander (or what was left of it after launch) had 6k/s delta-v remaining. I think a redesign of the lander might be in order. Especially given that the final push to Laythe orbit required some seat of the pants flying to get from sub-orbital to a stable orbit (setting up a node wasted precious time) with the nuclear engine after the boosters had all been expended.