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Big ideas are tied to little rockets. This was true in human history and it's true regarding Kerbal Space Program. Compared to other games, like Elite: Dangerous, KSP is light hearted and fun. Ironically, we are more invested in the fates of our Kerbals, their lives, their fiery deaths and their combined efforts to fly than we ever are in games like Elite: Dangerous. It's true that in those games we can warp around with our frame shift drives (Albecurrie drives for those who haven't played the game) hauling slaves, blasting innocent merchants to smithereens around Barnard's Star. Those games are fun, but fundamentally they don't involve the emotional connection that one gets with plucky, little green astronauts desperately trying to rocket themselves into cosmos. A ten year old version of myself or my daughter could dryly check the commodity prices of Imperial slaves in one game, but would be deeply frustrated when Valentina burns to a crisp with a poorly planned re-entry. This is why KSP is a great vehicle to introduce kids and adults to ethics of technology. Compared to other games, the thought involved by the player to get their craft flying along with the characters of the Kerbals leads to an investment that simply doesn't exist in other games. Back in the 90s, when I was budding psychopath, I got the idea to grab my pet hamster, put him in a plastic bottle, strap him to my big styrofoam glider and see what happened. Luckily, the thought of killing my pet compelled me to place hamster-like rocks in the plastic bottle and engage in a styrofoam glider test program. I could never get myself to put my hamster on my rockets, radio control planes, etc. The desire not to murder my pet combined with the desire to fly those same creatures got me into learning about aerodynamics, force coupling, aviation and space history, math, engineering, etc. I was going to fly my pets, but I was going to do it right. That experience was just from masking tape, Estes rockets and foam. Eventually, I wound up doing the flying myself and getting degrees in a bunch of unimportant fields. KSP is unique in that it gives kids and adults alike the chance to experience those same feelings and have similar epiphanies without actually murdering hamsters. I would suggest that we make the tech tree an order of magnitude more expensive to progress through and offer a great many more opportunities for science, especially early in the game. A cute, fluffy Kerbunny Kapsule could be mounted on rockets allowing players to choose whether they want to blast their lovable Kerbunnies into suborbital trajectories for science or try to preserve the cute bunnies and simply air drop from them from planes into ocean for science. More science could be gained by recovering Kerbunnies alive. Having a live creature that is somewhat more disposable than a Kerbonaut, requires less mass to fly but is several times more cute opens up a whole range of new experiences and decisions to players. This also allows for much more variety in how you progress through career mode, especially early in the game. It's also a nod to the early years of the Space Race. (note to the moderators: I am making a sincere effort to be apolitical in this post. I am not sure if my reference to another company's game is okay or not. If I run afoul of some regulation, I apologize. As usual, my taste remains poor and my humor remains juvenile.)