FinalFan

A few times after a long and/or harrowing re-entry, I've EVAed Kerbals that appear to have taken permanent damage (permanent in the context of the mission they are on) while they were inside the ship. There is a bar, like the thermal warning bar, only this one isn't going away when the heat goes away. This is thermal damage, correct? I've seen the same thing when I once EVAed a kerbonaut in the upper atmoshpere only to quickly get him back in when the heat bar appeared and rose alarmingly quickly. That one might have disappeared after he got back in the ship; I don't know. Can kerbonauts die of this damage even if the ship is okay? I have a picture, but I don't want to create an imgur album for this sole purpose, unless you guys insist on seeing evidence.

New player, stock game. I've been addicted to recovering booster stages ever since they started lasting to orbit. I'm bad at it, but I don't take a loss on the probes and parachutes and it keeps my system clean. I'm not sure how much this effort impacts my delta-v, but I'm sure it's less than everything else I'm doing wrong.

I can 100% confirm that as of the current time you don't need to be below 70km to fulfill "in flight" contracts. I just put a guy into orbit for the same reason you did and then wasn't able to fulfill a contract when I tried to pass over a spot. That's what led me to this thread. I wasn't sure if I had missed it or if you weren't allowed to do it from orbit. I just did another one from 73,xxx meters, but my periapsis was 68,xxx, so maybe you can't do it from "full" orbit, but you can definitely do it from some kind of orbit. I'm pretty sure 69km periapses are not considered orbits for some other contracts. I cannot 100% confirm full orbits won't work; I can 100% confirm that "suborbital" orbits will work no matter the actual altitude.