James Kerman

Earth's early atmosphere is thought to have been lost by a different mechanism - planetesimal bombardment. An article on MIT's studies of the phenomenon here.

The Scansat mod does that with the biome scanner.

I have been using KAX to create VTOLS with the electric propeller for Duna and Eve. Nowhere near as good as cupcake's creations but they fly.

Let it burn up on re-entry. Since the Apollo missions humanity has been stuck in orbit. If the ISS is gone then there is more chance and more funding to send humans further than the moon.

I only play KSP now (Thanks everyone at squad for a unique and remarkable game) and I only play career mode. It challenges me in the early game to do more with less and forces me to take contracts I don't feel comfortable doing in order to upgrade KSC or unlock science nodes. It has taught me to maximise returns from missions (My first kerballed mission off Kerbin in my latest save mined 4 biomes on Minmus and 3 biomes on the Mun for science and profit). Personally I don't think I would have progressed so far with my understanding of the game without career mode. Later on career basically becomes a sandbox game when you have all the science unlocked and plenty of Kredits - that's usually when i'll add some new mods and start afresh.

My first interplanetary landing was on Ike (career explore mission) and I managed to land on an ore patch without a survey. I thought "this is cool, I'll fuel up, hop over to Duna, get the science and come home" .... this was a stock install with no mods so I didn't know how much TWR or DV I needed. In the end I just made orbit and pushed all the way home with the EVA jetpack. I think it took 6-8 hours IRL even with a lucky Mun assist. Now I use Kerbal Engineer Redux and research new destinations.

I concur with Kiwi - it's pretty hard to drink yourself cool on a 45 degree Celsius day over here (Aus). On topic, I have read a thread where Nova had an idea for the monoliths and other anomalies to reveal another planet (Duna SSTV signal). I think this would have made one of the best easter eggs in any game I'd ever played. Imagine if the planet was occupied by the alien overseers of kerbal civilization...

I have used transfer windows but who wants to wait 3 years? I mostly brute force where I want to go and then I get out and push when I inevitably run out of fuel.

...Bada** Aerospace...

Greetings All, I can still remember my first Kerbin orbit. 3 days of failure followed by the most amazing sense of achievement I've ever felt playing a game. Worst moment was accidentally clicking space centre instead of reverting after turning Jeb, Bill and Bob into paste on the Duna surface. Cheers, James