I went into sandbox mode as a measure of caution before loading up my career mode save, sent one of my 1.02 landers into space and watched as the directional RCSes--just before achieving orbit--exploded in unison due to, apparently, radiated heat from the main orbital engine. After placing 2 gigantic radiator arrays on the offending engine/fuel tank and seeing absolutely zero noticeable difference in the build-up of heat, I just decoupled my lander and sent it back to Kerbin to land and finish the mission. The giant stowed solar arrays quickly exploded in the upper atmosphere--something that I hadn't expected with arrays that were packed back up and therefore weren't exposed--and the normally sufficient parachutes I had attached (which I remembered to open UNDER 250m/s) failed to provide enough drag to slow my vessel down more than about 10m/s resulting in a slow, but catastrophic landing which meant I wouldn't be recovering much in the way of funds or science if I tried this with my career mode save. Finally I just turned off KSP and went to play something else, more than slightly disappointed. I'm not sure where I stand on the game at this point. Despite the bugs, I was enjoying my career mode in 1.02 and was FINALLY getting my act together to get a mining/refueling operation set up on Minmus. With random things exploding for no good reason--and radiators that don't seem intuitive or, from my observations, functional--it's rather taken the wind out of my sails. I'm too far along in my current career mode game to willingly scrap it in favour of starting anew, but it seems that that's precisely what I might have to do given that it seems nothing I've sent into space before 1.04 will come back safely now and, indeed, may self-destruct due to no fault of my own apart from my inability to predict the future when it comes to somewhat drastic changes made to Kerbal physics. I've also read that aerobreaking/aerocapturing is, if not dead, then severely crippled, which is a shame. I really liked that aspect of interplanetary travel. I understand that some people want this game to be perfectly realistic, but you know, I think there are probably other games for that. Kerbin is not Earth. The solar system in KSP is not the same as our own. Why should we assume Kerbin is in the same type of universe we inhabit? I don't think the physics in the game have to EXACTLY copy our own--and yes, I know they don't, yet, but the calls for "realism" I see plastered across these forum pages seems rather extreme in a game where the entire race shares the same last name. What it all boils down to for me is that what kept me playing this game from early on in the alphas up until now has always been learning from my own mistakes to create something better and to set challenges that I work towards completing. The way aerodynamics in particular keeps changing with, seemingly, every patch, however, makes this nearly impossible for me to accomplish. I rather wish I hadn't had auto-update enabled so I could have kept my 1.02 KSP intact to at least finish out my career before having to learn the basics all over again.
