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I realized over the past few days that in my current Science save, I've implemented a few self-imposed rules that may be a little different from the common ones like "don't leave debris in orbit" or "no Kerbal left behind". Mind you, I try to do both of those (though I currently have a stage persistently ellipsing Kerbin -- not circling, it's pretty eccentric -- with a periapsis too high to ever decay without a "decaying orbits" mod). What I'm referring to is that I made a decision very early on, after Jeb's first flight in a Jumping Flea, never to put a Kerbal on top of a solid fuel engine again -- just because I think an engine you can't shut off or throttle once ignited is generally a bad thing for crewed flight. I started making decisions in the tech tree that amounted to making mine a rocket science program, without any of those dangerous-looking hypersonic gliders or HOTOL launchers. And, a bit further on, I realized that my particular KSP (at least this Science game) is basically about Kerbal heroism -- individual Kerbals (so far, don't have multi-crew command pods yet other than lander cans) going out into the Kerbol system in flying tin cans, piloting their own ships, using helper automation (like SAS and maneuver nodes) but not letting automation replace the pilots. In my mind, I've rationalized this as being due to a very strong union representing Kerbal space pilots, engineers, and scientists, applying pressure on the decision makers to ensure that their constituents are never put out of work by robot replacements. It makes for an interesting space program, in my opinion -- no solid boosters means if I need "moar power" I have to find ways to get it with liquid fuel, which sometimes means flying an old model rocket for multiple missions to bring back enough science to upgrade enough nodes to build a bigger rocket that can lift itself -- or using Thuds, now that I have them, to increase thrust of a stage. A design I'm still refining has 13 Mainsails and 30 Thuds firing at launch, with seven cores boosted by six strap-ons (the latter of which have five Thuds each), and can orbit a transfer stage with 5000+ m/s delta-V (pushing a heavy lander that can land on, and hopefully return from, any low-atmosphere body in the stock system, possibly excepting Tylo) -- and I designed that before even unlocking the Rhino, Mammoth, or Vector. Sure, I could send probes to Moho, Gilly, Ike, Duna, Dres, Vall, Bop, Tylo, and Eloo with launchers a tenth the size -- but that would get the Kerbal Space Pilots' and Engineers' Union up in arms, and you don't want those guys to go out on strike (plus, they own the Design Committee and everyone in Mission Control is a member). No space planes or glide return shuttles means everything comes down under parachutes, at least until I can build thrust-hover landers that return to Kerbin with enough fuel to, well, land. And no unmanned missions means I "have to" send multiple missions to Mun and Minmus to mine the data from their various biomes, always do the local science when a command pod lands on land (in hopes of getting some biome other than "grasslands", "mountains", "highlands", "shore", "waters" -- Jeb's been to the Northern Ice Shelf, but no one has been to the southern one yet, I'll get it eventually). So far, the science has been good, but I think I'm going to have to send missions to Ike or Gilly soon -- the new ship can get there, the only question is whether it can get back after orbital capture and adjustments. You can bet a Kerbal will be checking the fuel gauge before undocking the lander...