Hotaru

I like career mode, although the contracts and tech tree could still do with some improvement on the whole it feels much more balanced in 1.0 than it did in 0.90. My solution to the early-game grind is to start out my career save with extra funding (150-200%), which gets me through the first few tech levels without too much of a grind, then, when I get to the point where funds stop being an issue (usually around my first Mun landing) I edit my persistence file to give myself a "budget cut" down to 70-100% or so. (I figure this makes a sort of sense, seeing as NASA had its budget cut right around the same time as the Moon landings.) It's not perfect but at least I get out of the early grind without having funds become pointless in the late game. I do wish we had a better end game, either a bigger tech tree (mods like Near Future or Modular Kolonization help, although I'm trying to keep my current save mostly stock) or something else to do with science points once the tree is finished, like using them to train kerbonauts. Still, right now I'm enjoying career mode more with fewer mods than I had in 0.90, already built my first career SSTO, some space stations, looking forward to trying out ISRU. Maybe this time I might even make it to Duna before I start over!

Made my first SSTO passenger run in career mode. Starlet Alice launched from KSC with two scientists and two tourists, refueled at Kilgore Station in LKO, stopped at Barbicane Station in Munar orbit for the tourists, now on its way to Bass Station in Minmus orbit where it will drop off the scientists and pick up some data for return to Kerbin along with the tourists.

Never made an SSTO pre-1.0 but with the new aerodynamics I thought I'd try them out. I've been having a lot of fun playing with them in sandbox mode last couple days. Here are the ones that didn't get stuck on the sound barrier, blow up in atmo, or run out of gas. Mark 4 was my first successful SSTO space plane. 2 crew, 4 passengers, 4 Rapiers, 4 turbo-ramjets, 76 tons, kinda ugly & pretty much useless (no docking port, RCS, power supply, etc.) but it did make it to orbit & back! Mark 6B, single-seater, 2 turbo-ramjets & 1 T30. Wanted to see if I could do it without Rapiers. Had some CoG issues while low on fuel, went into a spin after reentry & only recovered by transferring all the fuel forward. Mark 7, trying to make something halfway useful. 4 crew, 32 passengers, 7 Rapiers at the back + 4 jets. Much to my surprise it actually made orbit & returned (on the second try; first try dismantled itself on the runway due to lack of struts). Think this is the only one with a mod part (the Rapiers are mounted on the thrust plate from Procedural Fairings). Mark 8, another single seater. I like this one, stupidly overpowered, handles pretty well in atmo & only has 13 parts. Not sure if the pre-cooler actually does anything or not. Mark 12, think this is my favorite so far. Mostly mid-game tech (except the shock cones, but I bet it would still work with ram inlets), 4 kerbals to LKO in a fully-reuseable 30,000-spacebuck ship (vs. 42,000 for my current 3-kerbal expendable career-mode workhorse), handles reasonably well considering its lack of wings.

I love the new aero model. Now that the capsule-flipping issue is fixed my only remaining complaint is anything with fairings seems to need fins, even with MechJeb guidance. Best part for me is (unlike FAR in 0.90) MechJeb's aerocapture/reentry predictions work with the new aero. So satisfying to be able send a pod all the way from Mun orbit & have it parachute down right next to KSC, or do an aerocapture without worrying about having it turn into a (crash-)landing if I come in too low.

Needed more struts.

Camler Kerman does an EVA to repair the Iguanodon's single engine (which suffered a coolant leak during liftoff). Meanwhile, the engineers back at KSC debate whether building a one-engine Orbiter was really such a good idea in the first place.

Launched my first operational space shuttle! And then got sidetracked playing with Kronal Vessel Viewer.

Unsuccessful ScanSat launch to polar orbit (mostly salvageable since the booster is re-useable anyway) and first Mun landing this career. It actually landed upright in spite of the slope, but Ening Kerman knocked it over climbing down the ladder. At least it was carrying plenty of life support.

So I'm completely and utterly new at this and I don't have any impressive multi-part, assembled-on-orbit battleships to show off yet, but this early-game, one-Kerbal Minmus trip ended up being pretty satisfying so I thought I'd share it. Backstory: Auk X was originally meant to be the first landing on Minmus, but on an earlier mission some idiot in the VAB stacked a fairing and a de-coupler in the wrong order, preventing Jebediah from orbiting the Mun (he did accomplish a distant flyby, coming back by free-return trajectory) and bumping everything back a mission. Anyway, Roley Kerman, the pilot for Auk X, was understandably disappointed at being relegated from "first Kerbal on another world" to the slightly less cool "first Kerbal to orbit Minmus." This is what happened: I normally do pretty much all my orbital maneuvering with MechJeb, so it was satisfying to do a fully manual rendezvous, without autopilot or maneuver nodes, and get it right on the first try. Just for the record, the main balance-changing mods on this mission were FAR, Deadly Reentry, TAC Life Support, MechJeb, ISP Difficulty Slider, Dangit, Construction Time, and a number of part mods (on this flight mostly KW Rocketry and Procedural Fairings).

Hello everyone, I've been playing KSP since Christmastime, keep coming back here looking for mods and bug fixes and so on so I thought I would introduce myself. On my third career save now (excepting a few false-starts), working on orbiting Jeb round the Mun... might've gotten further than that by now if I didn't keep installing more mods and having to start over!