If you complete a rescue contract, do you get to keep the Kerbal you rescued?

[plstormer]

I've never attempted a rescue contract so I have no idea what happens afterwards

Are rescued Kerbals added to your astronaut list? Can you then use them in later missions?

Edited October 10, 2015 by plstormer

[Red Iron Crown]

Welcome aboard!

You do indeed get to keep the kerbal, they will be added to your roster.

[Geschosskopf]

Rescue missions, BTW, are the ONLY affordable way to accumulate a large roster of Kerbals in the stock game. The ridiculous cumulative, exponential increase in hiring costs in the Astronaut Complex quickly makes it financial suicide to just buy them. Fortunately, there's a mod to limit Kerbal costs but if you don't do that, you'll have to grind out scads of rescues.

[A_name]

They will come leveled up with the appropriate Xp from wherever you rescued them, too!

[Capt. Hunt]

just be careful not to take missions with more then one star. They start getting really weird. Extremely eccentric retrograde munar orbits, Hohman transfer orbits, other planets, missions to rescue the astronaut with his capsule, etc. Also, be careful if you have any mods with capsules that do not have hatches, the engine may randomly spawn them. On one assignment I had to figure out how to recover a FuseTek Karmony module, which involved a clawed 3 meter heatshield and a dozen parachutes, and still took multiple attempts.

[Sharpy]

Well, do take them for the rewards but read the contracts carefully, verify the orbits and be prepared for a challenge!

Heh, I still remember the thread "please recover this orbital FOREST". A guy had to land a 30-ton ring station with an actual garden with a bunch of trees inside.