SunChaser

Minmus was my first destination outside of Kerbin's SOI. It takes far less d-v to orbit and land and due to the low gravity, a little Monopropellant goes a long way there. You can very easily de-orbit, land, and esacpe Minmus using RCS, or even EVA fuel if you lose an engine.

This is genius. Well done.

The A-Plus Physics project looks great. You wouldn't have to do all of them, just pick and choose a few, i.e. achieve 50-km sub-orbital trajectory, orbit Kerbin, land and return from Minmus. Could be very fun and an excellent way to visualize those challenging problems. Plus group-work is the best way to learn, or so they told me at school. Keep in mind high school and 200-level university courses (if i remember correctly) spend only a few days on orbital mechanics like Kepler's Laws as EtherDragon said before generalizing the concepts and math in order to do gravitational problems. You can't model a lot of that stuff in KSP, as it (currently) does not have n-body physics, so no Lagrange Points, etc.

I imagine my 'planes' would behave sort of like that if/when I install FAR.

Why do you want to use only one canister? They are pretty light and if you aren't using NEAR/FAR they produce less drag than a thermometer or barometer (heh). I'd go with the advice of those who say just bring four and you won't really need to return to that biome for science again.

This discussion reminds me of the 'nerf lobby' in Paradox games--some of my favorites. A whole bunch of people feel a feature (or lack thereof) makes the game too easy/difficult, kills immersion, etc. but if patches alter the difficulty of the game dramatically, people might just not update the game...and then show up on the forums complaining about balance issues and bugs that were fixed a year ago (hello Crusader Kings II).

This. Great for launch escape towers on the cheap and they make good escape pods for space stations as well. I also always overbuild my rockets and include tons of Monoprop after (multiple) Minmus landings went wrong and I had to get home with just RCS.

Pressure near the top of Mount Everest is 0.3 atm or less, which is enough to knock out somebody who hasn't acclimatized for an extended period of time, but pressure is not a concern if you have supplemental O2. If I'm not mistaken though, the pressure on Mars is 0.01 atm or less...definitely space-suit conditions. Then there's the issue of dust, which obviously is not currently an issue on Duna in KSP but would be on Mars. Other than that, I think it would be doable, the big problem is if something went wrong on Duna, you're boned, while a climber who gets frostbite can be returned to base camp and may only lead to amputation.

How did you get Jeb stuck in 15 degree solar orbit trying to get to Mun?

Waow. Very nice base. I wish I could do stuff like that, but my PC would also scream with all those parts.

I'm a fairly new player but I've more or less got the hang of the game by now. That said, it was pretty tough getting anywhere outside of Kerbin's SOI and returning in one piece for a while. If you think 'X' is too easy, there are a lot of mods (that I'm not ready for) that would make the game a lot harder--and more realistic. As other posters have mentioned, FAR, Deadly Re-Entry, etc. As far as the science tree goes, career mode probably won't stay like this forever, but you can get a ton of science just by doing missions on and in orbit around Kerbin. With some good contracts and a few missions to Minmus/Mun you can finish it easily--but this isn't the most exciting way to play the game. Part of the fun is challenging yourself, like trying to put a big station in orbit without orange tanks, doing interplanetary transfer without ion engines (hard for me at least).

Jeb is stuck in polar orbit around the Mun and I haven't gone back for him. It's been like 3 years. I use huge asparagus boosters to lift anything, regardless of how small it is. As a result I have gotten used to making really inefficient maneuvers. Worst of all, I'm an awful pilot. I sometimes force physical time acceleration to increase intake air.

I got a contract to test the ion engines in orbit around Kerbin--I haven't unlocked the xenon fuel yet. Most of the "while landed on Kerbin" and "while splashed down" contracts are just silly. Best contract so far would be to test the launch clamps on Kerbin, which got me way more money and science than it should have.