Kermanzooming

I didn' knew of the Orion engines... they look awesome (video review for those like me). I had a look at TAC and USI-LS, at the end decided for the simpler USI option. I installed it to give bases some reason to be ( and hopefully, with the need of greenhouses, to achieve some kind of self-sufficiency). As I play on a Mid-2011 MacBook Air, I tend to use as less mods as possible... Althoug maybe performance is not as affected by the number of mods as per the number of parts, never really knew.

Good to know, recently I have been having close (~20 Km) with space debris and was getting a little worried... Do any of you devote time to space junk cleaning missions? It's in my to-do list but there is always something else to do...

Are you playing with Life Support? Which one?

Forgot to add I'm playing with USI Life Support, so bases will be an extra challenge. I like your plan, gathering all science from all biomes is quite a challenge... And the point of taking Surface Samples is to force me to do manned missions with a return to Kerbin. Right now I have probes on the way to Duna+Ike, Jool and Moho for reconnaissance purposes.

The challenging part here is the 10 Km/s with reasonable TWR. Ion engines or NERV are the way to get those 10 Km/s, but getting good TWR with them seems difficult.

It's true that KSP is not finely balanced in terms of gameplay; you can easily unlock all the tech tree without leaving the Kerbin system, so going to the outer planets is not needed in terms of science. And heavily modding my game is not an option, as I am playing on a not so powerful laptop that can't cope with a lot of mods. That's why I have challenged myself; I should get a Surface Sample from every biome in every body (planets and moons) and bring it back safely to Kerbin. It also gives me a reason for creating manned base with MKS-Lite, so exploration can be done locally instead of from Kerbin. Anyone has done this challenge before?

So simple solution and never came to my mind This is why I enjoy so much this game; it's not about space exploration, it's about solving problems

Am I doing my interplanetary burns correctly? When travelling to Duna and the rest of exterior planets, my escape burn from Kerbin must be done on the night side of the planet to make use of the optimal ejection angle. This is of course is a problem with ion engines, so right now I'm dealing with it by doing multiple burns in consecutive orbits around Kerbin. Am I missing something, or it's inevitable due to orbital mechanics to have to burn on the night side?

I fully agree with all said above; planes are not feasible without quicksave/quickload/revert and they are essential to avoid raging over bugs destroying all your work.

After playing Career mode a lot with Quicksave/Quickload enabled, I decided to start from scratch without Quicksave/Quickload. What a change! In my experience, Quicksaving/loading makes you lazy; it makes the game more a trial/error experience than fully trying to account all the variables. And it also makes losing a Kerbal something much more emotional... like when I killed Jebediah in one of my first sub-orbital flights. What do you think? Have you given it a try this way?