TheDeamon

It isn't just NASA with that problem. Boeing couldn't do that either government contract or no. Their shareholders would be filing SEC complaints.

edit: Okay, found my issue causing the contract failure, disregard. I only thought they were alive because the command capsule survived. They were in the Hitchhiker Storage Container, which didn't survive. Ouch.

From what I've seen, the EVA Science Experiment may be like a number of other experiments that once it has been done once at a given elevation, it is done for that portion of that SOI. So no running around from biome to biome seeking new places to play golf... Well, I guess you can still do that, but you won't get any additional science from it after the first report is sent back. And now that I've typed that out. I'm now wondering if somebody is working on a mod to allow people to do exactly that, either as a joke, or because they like golf that much.

Some of the comments on it earlier made me want to say that it was tied to weight, not mass, and volume. In either case, a quick test while orbiting Kerbin says it is mass, and volume renders the discussion pointless. At 40 liters of volume available to a Kerbal, and the smallest deployable science item taking 25 liters of space, you would only be able to fit one on the back of your kerbal anyway.

In the meantime, I guess someone can explore the bizarre realm of Kerbal Facial Propulsion techniques. Just line a bunch of Kerbals up on a section of ladder in space and see what happens.